THE :i 

INDUSTRIAL 
SITUATIOlsil 



FRANK TRACY CARLTON i 



if ill 

^* ill 



\iK 




Book 



COP/RIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Industrial Situation 



The Industrial Situation 



Its Effect Upon 

The Homey The School 

The fTage Earner and The Employer 



By 
FRANK TRACY CARLTON, Ph. D. 

Professor of Economics and History in Albion College. 
Author of ** The History and Problems of Or- 
ganized Labor,** *^ Education and In- 
dustrial Evolution,** etc. 




New York Chicago Toronto 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 






.C26 
Copyright, 1914, by 

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



APR -3 1914 



New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago; 125 North Wabash Ave. 
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 






©CLA37118i 



In commending this volume the Federal 
Council Commission on the Church and 
Social Service does so for the purpose of 
bringing to the churches a thoughtful con- 
sideration of the problems of modern in- 
dustry. 

This authorization does not relate to 
matters of interpretation in detail, which 
are, of necessity, in large measure the re- 
sponsibility of the author. 

For the Commission, 

Charles S. Macfaeland, 

Secretary of the Coimcil. 



Introduction 

THE social question is the outstanding 
question of our day. In the providence 
of God and the processes of history we 
are brought face to face with this question. The 
issues involved are here to challenge the intelli- 
gence and the faith of men. The social question 
includes the question how to secure a more just 
and equitable distribution of the resources of so- 
ciety, the question how to bring larger oppor- 
tunity and more happiness into the lives of many, 
the question how to moralize wealth and human- 
ize industrial processes, the question how to 
bring the disinherited into the family circle and 
give them an heir's portion in life, the question 
how men can live together on terms of justice and 
brotherhood. These questions cannot be evaded. 
It is for the churches to give men the clue to 
their solution. 

That the churches are earnestly seeking to in- 
dicate their solution is one of the most hopeful 
signs of our times. Especially are the churches 
at present concerned with what is perhaps the 
most insistent phase of the social problem — the 
problem of industry. Much has been said and 
much has been written concerning the workers' 
alienation from the churches and the churches' 
lack of sympathy with the workers. How far 



8 Introduction 

these complaints have been justified in the past 
we need not here consider ; the fact is that to-day 
the churches are seeking to expre^ the mind of 
the Master upon questions which vitally affect 
the welfare of the workers and of society at large. 
Various religious bodies in this country have 
already formulated declarations of industrial 
principles. More significant than any of these 
is the united declaration put forth at Philadel- 
phia in 1908, and reaifirmed at Chicago in 1912, 
by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ 
in America, representing several million Chris- 
tians. This platform, which embodies what has 
been called the '^social faith'' of the churches, 
has been ratified by several of the leading de- 
nominations of the country.^ 

" The Churches must stand : 

*< I. For equal rights and complete justice for all 
men in all stations of life. 

'* 2. For the protection of the family, by the single 
standard of purity, uniform divorce laws, proper regu- 
lation of marriage, and proper housing. 

'* 3. For the fullest possible development for every 
child, especially by the provision of proper education 
and recreation. 

*' 4. For the abolition of child labor. 

''5. For such regulation of the conditions of toil 
for women as shall safeguard the physical and moral 
health of the community. 

*' 6. For the abatement and prevention of poverty. 

** 7. For the protection of the individual and so- 

*See ''Cbristian Unity at Work," Macfarland. Pub- 
lished by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in 
Amerioa* 



Introduction 9 

ciety from the social, economic and moral waste of th€ 
liquor traffic. 

*< 8. For the conservation of health. 

*<9. For the protection of the worker from dan- 
gerous machinery, occupational diseases, and mor- 
tality. 

<* 10. For the right of all men to the opportunity 
for self-maintenance, for safeguarding this right 
against encroachments of every kind, and for the pro- 
tection of workers from the hardships of enforced 
unemployment. 

**ii. For suitable provision for the old age of 
the workers, and for those incapacitated by injury. 

'* 12. For the right of employers and employees 
alike to organize ; and for adequate means of con- 
ciliation and arbitration of industrial disputes. 

**i3. For a release from employment one day in 
seven. 

*' 14. For the gradual and reasonable reduction 
of the hours of labor to the lowest practicable point, 
and for that degree of leisure for all which is a condi- 
tion of the highest human life. 

''15. For a living wage as a minimum in every 
industry, and for the highest wage that each industry 
can afford. 

*' 16, For a new emphasis upon the application of 
Christian principles to the acquisition and use of 
property, and for the most equitable division of the 
product of industry that can ultimately be devised." 

As will be seen, most of the '^ planks " of this 
platform have to do with aspects of modern in- 
dustrial reform. Valuable though they are as 
expressions of the churches' changed attitude 
towards labor, they are scarcely specific enough 
for the average reader. In order that the various 
Christian bodies of this country may take effect- 



10 Introduction 

ive action looking towards the reform of indus- 
trial conditions of the present and the institution 
of justice in the relations between the employer 
and the employee, it is essential that these differ- 
ent constituencies should know just what are the 
facts concerning our modern mechanism for the 
production and the distribution of the necessities 
of life. 

A clear statement of a problem is a first step 
towards its solution. In the following pages 
Prof. Frank T. Carlton, who has already con- 
tributed a valuable study of '^ The History and 
Problems of Organized Labor," attempts to 
show the basic factors and the principal phases 
of the recent industrial situation. The author 
has endeavored to put the facts in a way which 
should prove helpful to the average member of 
the Christian Church who may have had no op- 
portunity to learn the facts at first hand. His 
statement of the problem may be recommended 
as both clear and concise. 

It is hoped that the summaries and questions 
appended to the various sections may prove of 
value in adapting the book to the purposes of 
study classes as well as of private readers. 

S. Z. Batten, 
P. M. Crouch, 
Special Cmnmittee on Puhlication. 



Contents 

I. The Evolution of Modern Industry i 5 

1. Social Progress and the Work of the World. 

2. The Relation Between Social Progress and 

the Work of the World During the Last 
Century. 

3. The Birth of Modern Industry. 

4. The Worker of a Century Ago. 

5. Growth of Manufacture Before the Civil War. 

6. The Second Industrial Revolution, 

7. After the Civil War. 

8. Immigration. 

II. The Industrialism of To-Day 32 

1. Rural and Urban Population. 

2. The Growing Importance of the City. 

3. Monotonous Work. 

4. Tendencies in Agriculture. 

5. " Satellite Cities." 

6. Scientific Management. 

7. The Relations of Employer to Employee. 

III. The Effect of Industrial Evolution 

Upon the Home and Home Life . 51 

1. The Home of the Pioneer. 

2. The Urban Home. 

3. The Process of Adjustment. 

4. Woman's Place in the Home. 

5. Relation of Children to Parents. 

6. The Functions of the Home. 

7. The Home in the " Good Old Days.** 

8. Community Effort. 

IV. Industry and the School System . 61 

1. Education is a Labor-Saving Device. 

2. Education May be a Progressive or Reac* 

tionary Force. 

3. Education Should be a Directive Agent. 

II 



1 2 Contents 

4. The Changing Sphere of Formal Education. 

5. New Educational Ideals are Needed. 

6. What Should the American Public School 

Aim to Accomplish ? 

7. The Four Standards. 

8. The Insistent Demand for Practical Educa- 

tion. 

9. Demands of Social Reformers. 

10. The Parting of the Educational Road. 
IX. The Need of a Yardstick. 
12. The School Should Exist for Workei^ as 
Well as Non-Workers. 

V. Women and Children in Industry . 78 

1. Woman and Child Labor is an Old Phe- 

nomenon. 

2. Statistics of Woman and Child Labor. 

3. Legislation. 

4. Legal Status of Legislation. 

5. Childhood is a Preparatory Period. 

6. The Fundamental Child Labor Problem. 

7. Child Labor is an Economic Mistake. 

8. Woman^sWork. 

9. The Solution. 

VI. Wages and Hours .... 93 

1. Accurate Wage Statistics are Difficult to 

Obtain. 

2. Statistics. 

3. The Menace of Low Wages. 

4. Real and Money Wages. 

5. Wages and Taxation. 

6. Hours. 

7. The Economy of the Short Working Day. 

VII. Employment 107 

I. Number of Persdns Engaged in Different 

Occupations. 
a. Overwork. 

3. Irregular Employment. 

4. Unemployment. 

5. Looking for Jobs. 

6. Homeless Workers. 

7. The Unemployable. 



1 



Contents 13 

VIII. Organized Labor in the United 

States 122 

1. Why Labor is Organized, 

2. The Structure of Labor Organizations. 

3. Trade and Industrial Unions. 

4. The American Federation of Labor. 

5. Affiliated Branches of the American Fed- 

eration of Labor. 

6. The Industrial Workers of the World. 

7. The Future of Industrial Unionism. 

8. Employers' Associations, 

9. The Effect of the Antagonism Between 

Employers' Associations and Labor 
Organizations. 
10. The Advance Agent of Radical Unionism. 

IX. Industrial Betterment . . 1 39 

1 . Voluntary Action on the Part of Employers. 

2. The Pressure of Organized Labor. 

3. Legislative Action. 

4. Organization of Consumers, 

5. Public Opinion. 

6. Industrial Control. 

7. The Proposals of the Single Taxers. 

8. The Proposals of the Socialists. 

9. The City vs. the Rural Districts. 

10. The Church and Industrial Betterment. 

References for Further Reading 157 



I 

THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN INDUSTRY 

SOCIAL PROGRESS and the Work of 
the World.— Social progress is vitally and 
intimately connected with changes in the 
methods of doing the world's work. Throughout 
the history of mankind discoveries, inventions, 
new methods of getting a living, and new ways 
of travelling and communicating have ever caused 
cataclysmic changes in human society. The dis- 
covery of the use of fire, of the smelting of 
metals, the invention of gun-powder, of the 
mariner's compass, and of the steam engine, 
each preceded and caused sweeping social and 
industrial changes. The Eeformation is the 
child of gun-powder and printing ; the remark- 
able democratic upheavals of the nineteenth 
century, of the Industrial Eevolution. Ifot one 
of the great reform or progressive movements of 
history can be adequately explained or clearly 
understood without turning the attention to the 
industrial revolution which preceded it and 
ushered it upon the more spectacular stage of 
political history. The unrest, the progressivism, 
the radicalism of to-day can only be explained, 
understood, and intelligently dealt with by those 
who are able and willing patiently to study the 
Industrial Situation of to-day and of yesterday. 

15 



'l6 The Evolution of Modern Industry 

Human society in recent generations has pre- 
sented to the student of sociology and of history 
a bewildering moving picture show. It has often 
seemed that nothing is stable, that everything is 
undergoing modification, upheaval, or rejection. 
We are often tempted to ciy out passionately 
against the new and to cling valiantly to the old 
because it is old. Methods of doing the world^s 
work and of controlling the world^s wealth have 
been changing in recent decades with unprece- 
dented rapidity, and, consequently, social, po- 
litical, legal, and religious readjustments are not 
only imperative but unfortunately difiBcult of or- 
derly attainment. A fragile article, subjected to 
sudden stresses and strains, is likely to crack ; 
human society subjected to rapid industrial 
modifications is in danger of a revolution unless 
wise and progressive leadership eases the strain 
by adapting the political, social, educational, and 
religious institutions to the new situation. To 
preserve the status quo is impossible ; the alter- 
natives are chaos or progress along many lines. 

2. The Relation betvireen Social Progress 
and the Work of the World during the Last 
Century. — Especially during the last century and 
a half the intimate relation between industrial 
evolution and social progress has been forced 
upon the attention of all thoughtful observers. 
The occidental peoples have been transformed. 
Eural life, isolation, the domestic system of in- 
dustry, and non-specialized work, are replaced by 
urban life, interdependence, the factory system, 



Social Progress and Work of the World 17 

and minute subdivision of labor. The individ- 
uals and nations of the globe have been brought 
closely in touch with each other. The fighter has 
been displaced by the financier, the isolated 
worker by the trade unionist, the partnership by 
the giant corporation, the local by the world 
market, the stage-coach by the Pullman, and the 
sickle by the harvester. These kaleidoscopic 
changes in industry are distinctly refiected into 
the home, social, and political life of the com- 
munity. New laws, new governmental forms, 
modified relations between husband and wife and 
between children and parents, new social im- 
peratives, and new relations between social 
classes are some of the visible fruits of industrial 
transformation. Much of the current discussion 
of reform movements of various kinds is vitiated 
because adequate attention is not paid to the 
fundamental forces which are producing the 
visible social changes. 

In the study of the political, educational, re- 
ligious, or ethical problems of to-day, two im- 
portant facts, often neglected by the student who 
is unacquainted with the history of industrial 
evolution, must be given careful consideration. 
In the first instance, the social environment, in- 
cluding the sum-total of influences which bear 
upon the life of the individual, has been enlarged. 
People, intelligence, goods, now come from or go 
to distant parts of the earth quickly, regularly, 
and surely. The world of the twentieth century 
is one vast neighborhood ; no dark, unknown 



l8 The Evolution of Modern Industry 

continents remain upon the map. In the second 
place, specialization of industry has tended to 
confine the life and activity of the vast majority 
of workers of all grades within very narrow 
grooves. While modern methods of communica- 
tion and transportation, world markets and the 
multiplicity of industrial products offer oppor- 
tunities to broaden the mental horizon and tend 
to differentiate the demands of individuals for 
necessities, comforts, and luxuries, occupations 
have been specialized and subdivided until the 
life of the individual is cramped. Earlier forms 
of industry gave the worker a relatively broad 
outlook, and did not force him into a rigid 
routine. Our daily work and home environment 
usually tend under modern conditions to astigma- 
tize our view at the time when democracy and 
world unity should thrive. This is the grim and 
forbidding paradox of modern industrial life. 

In the earlier centuries, work was necessarily 
drudgery because of the difficulty in satisfying 
the necessities of men. To-day with the aid of 
steam and innumerable steel and iron assistants, 
production has been multiplied many fold. It 
has been observed that machinery has taken the 
soul out of industry, that it has taken away the 
joy of working. But the condition of the wage 
earner in the handicraft or pre-machinery age, 
measured according to the standards of to-day, 
was distressing. However, no improvement 
comparable with the great increase in productiv- 
ity has as yet taken place. With progress, 



The Birth of Modern Industry 19 

poverty still remains, the sky-scraper and the 
mansion stand beside the sweat-shop and the 
hovel, and the idle rich surfeited with an excess 
of leisure present a marked contrast to the twelve- 
hour-per-day, seven-day-per-week, steel worker. 
The fundamental industrial problem of to-day is 
that of putting joy and self-expression into in- 
dustrial processes, or at least that of reducing 
drudgery to a minimum. And the fundamental 
social problem of to-day is that of giving to each 
individual the opportunity to live a healthful, 
joyous, and useful life. 

3. The Birth of Modern Industry. — The busi- 
ness and financial methods of ancient Eome and 
of the medieval cities presented many features 
similar to those found in modern times. But 
modern industry may not inaccurately be said to 
date from the opening of the Industrial Eevolu- 
tion in the latter portion of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. Briefly stated, the Industrial Eevolution 
means the great and rapid change produced in 
the methods of manufacturing and transporting 
goods by the introduction of machinery and 
water or steam power to supplement hand tools 
and the muscular strength of men, women, and 
children. Machinery was first used in the manu- 
facture of cotton goods in spinning the thread 
and weaving the threads into cotton fabrics. 
England was the first country in the world to 
utilize the factory system of manufacture involv- 
ing the use of power and machinery. The first 
factories in England and the United States were 



20 The Evolution of Modern Industry 

cotton factories. In Beverly, Massachusetts, in 
1787, was established the first American factory. 
This was an unsuccessful venture. The first suc- 
cessful factory was built by Samuel Slater at 
Pawtucket, Ehode Island, in 1790. Mr. Slater 
is often called the ^^ father of American manu- 
facture. '' The early factories were prepared only 
to spin the raw cotton into threads. It was not 
until 1814 that Francis Lowell invented the 
power loom and established the first American 
factory for the conversion of raw cotton into 
cloth. The factory system in this country may, 
therefore, be said to be one hundred years old. 

4. The Worker of a Century Ago.— During 
the first years of our national life, the all-im- 
portant occupation was farming. But the early 
farmer was also an artizan. He fashioned his 
own tools and implements, made the rude 
vehicles and harnesses needed. The farmer was 
also a house builder and furniture maker. The 
family made the clothing and prepared the food. 
The wife made the tallow candles which provided 
light, and the tallow came from animals raised 
and slaughtered on the frontier farm. 

The average American worker of the pre- 
factory period was a jack-of-all-trades. He per- 
formed numerous tasks each and every day ; and 
the kind of tasks to be performed varied with the 
weather and the season of the year. His hours 
of work were long but there was little of routine. 
On the other hand, the early American worker 
lived of necessity an isolated life. He knew 



Growth of Manufacture 21 

little or nothing of the great world outside. 
Means of transportation and communication were 
still very primitive. The railway, the steamboat, 
and the telegraph were unknown. The work of 
the average American of a century ago tended to 
bring him into contact with many kinds of pro- 
ductive activity, but his isolation from the out- 
side world tended to give him a narrow and 
provincial view of the world. 

5. Growth of Manufacture before the Civil 
War.— The close of the ^tar of 1812 was fol- 
lowed by a period of depression which continued 
until after 1820. From the time of recovery from 
the effects of this period of hard times until 1860, 
the growth of factories proceeded quite steadily, 
and factory industry began to assume larger and 
larger proportions relative to the handicraft form 
of industry. Mill towns and industrial cities de- 
veloped and absorbed larger and larger percent- 
ages of the entire population. In Massachusetts, 
for example, according to the Census of 1820 over 
33,000 persons were engaged in manufacture ; by 
1840, the number had increased to slightly more 
than 85,000. But during the same period the 
number reported as engaged in commerce de- 
creased, and the number engaged in agriculture 
increased about forty per cent. In the three New 
England States, Massachusetts, Ehode Island, 
and Connecticut, during the same period, 1820- 
1840, the number of persons engaged in agricul- 
ture increased approximately one-fourth ; those 
engaged in commerce decreased about one-third ; 



22 The Evolution of Modem Industry 

and those engaged in manufacture and trade in- 
creased nearly two and one-half times. In 1831, 
the capital invested in cotton factories was ap- 
proximately $41,000,000 and the number of em- 
ployees, 62,000; in 1850, the capital invested 
had increased to $76,000,000 and the number of 
employees to 95, 000. In the production of woolen 
goods, a similar increase took place. 

Among the important inventions and innova- 
tions of the decades immediately preceding the 
Civil War are many which practically revolution- 
ized industrial methods ; for example, the general 
introduction of the power loom, the use of the 
hot-air blast in iron smelting, the introduction 
of anthracite coal into the same industry, the in- 
ventions of the mower, the reaper, the sewing- 
machine, and the friction match, the introduction 
of the steam printing-press, the use of the screw 
propeller on steamboats, and the invention of 
the steam hammer for steel working. Methods 
of transportation and communication changed 
even more completely than did those employed 
in manufacture. The Erie Canal was completed 
in 1825. The succeeding ten or fifteen years saw 
a rapid development of canal systems in the 
Northern States. The use of steamboats, which 
began before 1820, increased at a rapid pace. 
But still more important was the development 
of the railway system. The first steam railway 
had thirteen miles open for traffic in 1830. In 
1840, the mileage of the steam railways of the 
United States was 2,640; in 1850, 9,021; in 



The Second Industrial Revolution 23 

1860, 30,635. The first telegraph line was con- 
structed in 1844. 

6. The Second Industrial Revolution. — The 
relatively brief period of the Civil War may be 
said to have ushered in a second industrial revo- 
lution ; it hastened the opening of a new indus- 
trial epoch. Before the War industrial establish- 
ments had been small, the rural districts were 
dotted with many small factories, and the rail- 
ways were short. But in the sixties began a very 
pronounced movement towards large-scale indus- 
try and centralized industrial control. Capital, 
railways, manufactories, mercantile houses, and 
urban communities grew rapidly. The War 
caused an unprecedented drain of workers from 
the farm, the office, and the shop. Into the ranks 
of the army went the best workers of the North. 
An abnormal and standardized demand arose for 
supplies to feed and equip the soldiers. The 
scarcity of workers on farm and in factory, and 
the fact that the new demand was, in a large meas- 
ure, for goods of a uniform quality, hastened the 
introduction of machinery. A demand for stand- 
ardized articles makes large-scale industry par- 
ticularly advantageous. The woolen industry 
grew at a phenomenal rate because of the demand 
for army clothing and because the importation 
of cotton from the South was cut off. The manu- 
facture of shoes passed from the small shop to the 
modern factory. The amount of capital invested 
in the manufacture of iron increased nearly six- 
fold in the decade of the sixties. Twice as many 



24 The Evolution of Modern Industry 

mowers and reapers were manufactured in 1864 
as in 1862. Almost in the twinkling of an eye a 
new industrial era was opened. 

7. After the Civil War.— In the half century 
since the Civil War, in many lines of manufac- 
ture the number of establishments has decreased 
or increased very slowly while the average num- 
ber of wage earners, the amount of capital in- 
vested, and the value of the output per establish- 
ment has increased rapidly. The following table 
presents comparative statistics of factories ac- 
cording to the Census of 1900 and that of 1910. 
The statistics are for the years 1899 and 1909. 

Number of iv^n^ v^Ui^ nf 

Cen^s. establish. Capital. ^^ ^^ig^ 

1900 207,514 18,975,256,000 4,712,763 $11,406,927,000 
1910 268,491 18,428,270,000 6,615,046 20,672,052,000 

J'fL^o^to 29.4 105.3 40.4 81.2 

of increase 

The manufacture of agricultural implements is 
a classic example of concentration in industry. 
In 1870, there were 2,076 establishments reported ; 
and in 1910, only 640. The average number of 
wage earners per establishment was, in 1870, 12 ; 
in 1910, 79. The value of the output per estab- 
lishment was, in 1870, $25,000; in 1910, nearly 
$229,000. In 1910 the number of establishments 
was reduced to about one-third of the number in 
1870, but the number of wage earners per factory 
was six and one-half times the number in 1870, 
and the value of the output nine times that of 



After the Civil War 25 

1870. The corporate form of business enterprise 
has become the predominant form. According 
to the Census of 1910, 25.9 per cent, of ail manu- 
facturing establishments in the United States were 
operated by corporations ; but 79 per cent, of the 
total value of the products of manufacturing es- 
tablishments was produced by corporate estab- 
lishments. In some lines of manufacture the 
corporation is supreme. In the smelting and 
refining of lead the total output is produced by 
corporate establishments; of steel works and 
rolling mills, 99.5 per cent. ; of gas plants, 99 per 
cent. ; and of petroleum refineries, 98.1 per cent. 
The control of American railways is now placed 
directly or indirectly in the hands of a small 
number of corporations. In agriculture, the 
corporation has not obtained a foothold. 

In recent years a new phenomenon — called 
integration of industries — has also become plainly 
visible. Great businesses like the United States 
Steel Corporation and the Standard Oil Company 
not only control in a large measure the iron and 
steel ;business and the oil business respectively, 
but they are reaching out into other lines of busi- 
ness activity. The first named corporation con- 
trols through its board of directors not only iron 
and steel mills, but bridge works, tin plate plants, 
coal and iron mines, coking furnaces, railway and 
steamship lines, docks and limestone quarries. 
Through stock ownership and interlocking di- 
rectorates the great railway, mining, manufac- 
turing, and banking interests of the nation are 



26 The Evolution of Modem Industry 

being knit closely together. A community of 
interests is being formed. 

As our industries have grown larger^ the mar- 
kets supplied by them have been enlarged, and 
more and more efficient methods have been em- 
ployed. A hasty survey of the meat packing 
industry of Chicago will furnish an excellent 
illustration. In 1860, this business was small 
and only supplied a local market. By 1877, the 
market area had enlarged until it comprised the 
entire United States. In 1910, this inland city 
sent its beef and other meats to Europe, South 
America, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the East 
India Islands. This astonishing growth of market 
area has been made possible by the use of the 
refrigerator and the process of canning. In the 
early history of the packing industry much was 
wasted ; but to-day practically nothing is allowed 
to go to waste. Blood, bones, hoofs, horns, trim- 
mings, and sinews are all utilized. A variety of 
articles are produced from w^hat was formerly 
thrown away, — soap, gelatine, butterine, bristles, 
glue, ammonia, pepsin, albumin, fertilizer, and 
many other products. The packing industry also 
practices extreme subdivision of labor. ^^ Skill 
has become specialized to fit the anatomy. ' ' Each 
worker has his own special and minute task to 
perform. He makes his particular cut or mo- 
tion, and passes the material to the next worker 
in the long line of specialized and articulated 
workers. 

The foregoing statistics are presented because 



Immigration 27 

the important, almost phenomenal, changes in 
industry mark equally important changes in the 
living and working conditions of the American 
people. Social, educational, political, and re- 
ligious institutions^ are feeling the effects of these 
changes. The statistics of the preceding sections 
are freighted with human weal or human woe. 
They are the concrete marks of a revolutionary 
change in American life. Can we as a nation 
adjust our habits and institutions formed when 
we were a frontier community, to large-scale 
manufacture, to big cities, to the situation which 
obtains after the frontier line has faded away f 
In the light of a new industrial situation which 
has been evolved with startling rapidity, what 
new function or functions should be performed 
by the state, the school, and the church ? What 
function or functions, if any, should no longer be 
performed f 

8. Immigration. —The United States is, and 
has been, a country possessing a large foreign- 
born population. Statistics of immigration have 
been gathered since 1820. During the period 
from 1820 to 1910, 27,918,992 immigrants came 
to our shores. Of this total 8,795,386, or 31.5 
per cent, arrived during the last decennial period, 
1901 to 1910. The arrivals during that decade 
equalled the population of the United States 
when James Monroe was first elected President. 
The immigrants have not flowed to this country 
in a steady but gradually widening stream. They 
have come in a somewhat irregular manner. 



28 The Evolution of Modern Industry 

There has been first a high tide and then a low 
tide. This wave-like motion has followed quite 
closely the ebb and flow of prosperous conditions. 
A period of prosperity in the United States has 
ever served as a magnet to draw immigrants to 
seek homes on this side of the Atlantic. On the 
contrary, a period of depression is always fol- 
lowed by a marked diminution in the flow of 
immigration. The last decennial period furnishes 
an example. In the last months of 1907 occurred 
a flnancial crisis of considerable magnitude. The 
effect upon immigration is clearly seen in the 
following figures which give the number of 
immigrants coming to this country during the 
decade,— 1901, 487,918; 1902, 648,743; 1903, 
857,046; 1904, 812,870; 1905, 1,026,499; 1906, 
1,100,735; 1907, 1,285,349; 1908, 782,870 ; 1909, 
751,786; 1910, 1,041,570; 1911, 878,587; and 
1912, 838,172. 

Although official statistics have only been 
gathered since 1908, the outward movement or 
emigration of aliens is about one-third of the 
immigration. Or, the net immigration is only 
about two-thirds of the gross immigration. If 
this ratio has held good during the last decennial 
period, the net immigration for the ten years 
would be approximately two-thirds of 8,795,386, 
or about 6,000,000. The average net immigra- 
tion per year would be in round numbers 600,- 
000, or about y|o of the total population of the 
United States in 1910. During the decade, 
1841-1850, estimating that the net immigration 



Immigration 29 

bore the same ratio to the gross, the average 
yearly immigration was approximately ^J^j of 
the population in 1850. 

Before the Civil War, Germany, Great Britain, 
and Ireland furnished the bulk of our immigrants. 
In recent years. Southern Europe, rather than 
Northern Europe, is contributing the major 
portion of the great stream of immigrants. As 
striking contrasts may be drawn between the 
typical immigrant of the pre-Oivil War period 
and that of to-day, as may be drawn between the 
small-scale industry of 1850 and the large-scale 
business of 1913. The shifting character of the 
typical immigrant is both a cause and an effect 
of the industrial transformation which the United 
States has witnessed since the middle of last 
century. The decline in immigration from 
Northern Europe is also in some measure due to 
the improved industrial and living conditions in 
many countries of Northern Europe and to the 
utilization of other outlets for population such as 
Canada, Australia, and South America. 

In recent decades, the rough and hard work of 
the nation has been in no small measure per- 
formed by the recent immigrant. It is this 
neglected and often despised recent immigrant 
who has built, and who repairs, our railways. 
He mines much of our coal and iron ore, he un- 
loads our vessels, cleans our streets, and works 
in our packing houses and canning factories. 
The immigrant of recent decades tends to con- 
centrate in the cities. In 1900, 66.3 per cent. 



30 The Evolution of Modern Industry 

of the total foreign-born population lived in 
cities having a population of 25,000 or over. 
Many important industries and many large cities 
would shrink into insignificance if divested of 
the foreign-born and the children of the foreign- 
born. In 1900 Chicago would have lost nearly 
four-fifths of her population through a migration 
of foreign-born and of those born of foreign 
parents. The great influx into the United States 
of low standard-of-living workers has tended to 
increase the division and subdivision of labor. 
On the other hand, without this influx of foreign 
workers more machinery might have been em- 
ployed in our industries. 

The Immigration Commission has pointed out 
several ^^ salient characteristics'' of recent immi- 
gration. 1. The bulk of recent immigrants 
have been farmers in their home country ; but 
the great majority become wage earners in our 
mines, in our factories, on our railways, or in 
construction work. 2. They lack industrial 
training and experience. 3. The typical immi- 
grant of to-day has an almost empty pocketbook. 
He must get a job at once. 4. His standard of 
living is low. 5. The recent immigrant is 
migratory, docile, and subservient. He has no 
property interests, and often no family ties, to 
attach him to any particular community. 

Summary 
Changes in methods of doing the world's work 
make imperative modifications in social institu- 
tion& 



Summary 31 

Successful reform movements act in harmony 
with the fundamental forces making for social 
change. 

The modern industrial age opened with the In- 
dustrial Ee volution. 

The early American worker was a jack-of-all- 
trades ; but the typical wage earner of to-day is 
a specialized worker. 

The American factory system was developed 
before the Civil War. During the Civil War, 
industrial progress was rapid. 

Since the Civil War, large-scale industry has 
become predominant ; and Americans have be- 
come familiar with subdivision of labor and 
world markets. 

Consequently, the real functions of different 
social institutions are being modified. 

The recent immigrant is our typical unskilled 
worker. 

Suggestive Questions 

What new duties and functions should the 
Church assume in modern, complex, urban civi- 
lization ? 

Does your church devote more attention to in- 
creasing its membership than to improving the 
living and working conditions in the community ? 

What is the attitude of your church towards 
higher wages and shorter working days for the 
manual laborer ^ 

How far should the churches concern them- 
selves with industrial questions ? 



II 

THE INDUSTRIALISM OF TO-DAY 

RURAL and Urban Population.— In 
1800, there were six American cities 
having a population of more than 8,000 
persons, and four per cent, of the total population 
lived in these six cities. One hundred and ten 
years later, over nine per cent, of the total popu- 
lation lived in three cities of over 1,000,000 each, 
22.1 per cent, in cities of over 100,000 each, and 
46.3 per cent, in towns and cities of 2,500 or 
over. At least one in every fifteen persons living 
in the United States in 1910 resided in the met- 
ropolitan district of New York City, that is, New 
York City and the contiguous urban districts. 

The Census Bureau divides Continental United 
States into ten geographic divisions for purposes 
of statistical comparison. In 1860, the first rank 
in population was held by the Middle Atlantic 
States, — New York, New Jersey, and Pennsyl- 
vania ; but during the next four decades the East 
North Central held the first place, — Ohio, Indiana, 
Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In 1910, 
however, the tide turned and that great industrial 
workshop, the Middle Atlantic division, again 
took first rank. Twenty-one per cent, of the total 



Rural and Urban Population 33 

population lived in these three factory, mining 
and commercial States. And seventy-one per 
cent, of the people living in the Middle Atlantic 
States resided in towns and cities containing 
2,500 or more people. In New England, the per- 
centage was 83.3. In the three geographic di- 
visions — New England, Middle Atlantic, and 
East North Central States— were contained 
4,800,000 of the 6,600,000 wage earners en- 
gaged in manufacturing, — nearly seventy-three 
per cent. 

American cities have been growing rapidly for 
several decades preceding the present ; but the 
census returns for 1900 gave some indication of a 
checking of the rate of increase of the urban rel- 
ative to the rural population.^ The 1910 returns, 
however, show evidences of a renewed surge 
towards the cities ; the trend towards the cities 
was unmistakable. In only two States, Montana 
and Wyoming, was the percentage of increase in 
the rural population greater than in the urban. 
In the decade, 1900-1910, the urban population 
of Continental United States^ increased 34.8 per 
cent., or slightly over eleven millions. The rural 
population increased during the same decade 11.2 
per cent., or nearly five millions. In the three 

^Carlton, **The Growth of Rural Population,'^ Popii/ar 
Science Monthly y December, 1903. 

^ An urban population was defined by the Bureau of the 
Census in 1910 as that ^* residing in cities and other incor- 
porated places of 2,500 inhabitants or more.'' In preceding 
reports, the limit was fixed at 8,000. 



34 The Industrialism of To-Day 

great industrial divisions, New England, Middle 
Atlantic, and East North Central States, in which 
dwell nearly one-half of the total population, the 
total increase in urban population during the last 
decennial period was over 6,500,000. But the 
rural population of the same divisions only in- 
creased 435,188. And, in New England and the 
East Central States, the rural population actually 
declined during the ten years. In a solid block 
of thirty counties in the southeastern part of 
Michigan only one county showed an increase in 
rural population during the decade. 

2. The Growing Importance of the City. — 
The traditional American democracy has been 
that of an increasing population facing almost 
unbounded natural resources and living upon a 
rising level of income. The familiar American 
type of democracy has been that developed among 
frontiersmen ; but to-day American democracy 
is confronting a new situation. The ever west- 
ward-travelling population wave reached the 
Pacific a score or more years ago, and that great 
barrier has turned the wave back upon itself. 
With the frontier eliminated and nearly one-half 
of the population classified as urban, the indus- 
trial problem in the United States takes on new 
aspects. New and often misinterpreted factors 
are introduced into the national equation. As in 
the ancient days when agriculture replaced hunt- 
ing and fishing, or in the less remote period when 
slavery and serfdom were replaced by the wages 
system, working and home conditions are now 



The Growing Importance of the City 35 

undergoing great transformations. America is, 
indeed, a great melting pot for the amalgamation 
of the peoples of the globe. 

Some writers enamored with an idealized view 
of early life in America consider cities to be 
danger points in our national life. Asks Pro- 
fessor Fetter, *^ Shall it be our ideal to multiply 
men on our city streets and smoking suburbs, 
away from fields and forests and mountains ; or 
shall we not rather give to all our people space 
to earn an ample living and to live an ample life, 
worthy of our democratic ideal?'' It is urged 
that, if the population still continues to increase 
because of high birth-rates and large immigra- 
tion, America is in danger of yielding a large 
crop of peasant farmers and city proletarians. 
More optimistic Americans assert that the city 
is '^ the hope of democracy," Certain it is that 
both the city and the factory are here and here 
to stay. Our problem as thoughtful American 
citizens is to ^^ humanize" them, not to lament 
their coming or to attempt to eliminate them. 
Twentieth century Americans must learn to live 
in cities ; they must be able to develop strong, 
clean, and capable men and women in cities. 

If not, then is the nation doomed to travel the 
downward path towards decay and degeneracy. 
The rural districts, already drained of much that 
is best, can no longer continue to furnish the city 
with its leaders. In the cities are found crowd- 
ing, hustle, noise, allurement, and excitement ; 
but in the cities are also found sanitary in- 



36 The Industrialism of To-Day 

spectors, playgrounds, good schools, public libra- 
ries, and labor organizations. In the past our 
cities have grown without reference to the needs 
of the men, women, and children who were forced 
to live in them. The city of the future is to be a 
planned city. It is to be one in which human 
resources may be conserved and increased ; it is 
to be more than a market-place, a site for smok- 
ing factories, or an opportunity for the land 
speculator. The city of the future will be a 
place where people live instead of merely exist. 
But in order to achieve this transformation, in- 
telligent, purposeful, devoted, and organized 
eflPort is needed. And our churches and church 
organizations have an opportunity to play a 
leading part in ^'humanizing '^ our cities, in 
making them the hope of democracy. 

3. Monotonous Work. — Two important char- 
acteristics of modern large-scale production are 
speed and monotony, — the products of extreme 
subdivision of labor. The typical unskilled 
laborer of to-day is the machine tender ; and 
many occupations may be accurately character- 
ized as '^ blind-alley trades,'' or trades which lead 
nowhere. A few examples will suffice to illus- 
trate the characteristics of many occupations. 
In the needle trades, power machines are often 
used. Some kinds carry as many as twelve 
needles, and make nearly 4,000 stitches per 
minute. The attention of the operator who is 
usually a woman cannot be relaxed ^' a second 
while the machine runs its deafening course, f^r 



Monotonous Work 37 

at the breaking of any one of the twelve gleam- 
ing needles or of the darting threads, the power 
must instantly be shut off.'' In canneries, 
^^ capping'' the cans is a good example of speed 
and monotony. After the cans are filled with 
fruit or vegetables, they are carried by a belt 
conveyor to the sealing or capping machine. 
The capping girl usually holds a number of the 
caps in her hands and drops ^^them monoto- 
nously, one at a time, upon the cans as they 
swiftly pass on the tireless conveyor, at a rate 
varying from fifty-four to eighty cans per 
minute.'' The attention of the reader has been 
called to the extreme subdivision of labor 
found in the meat packing industry. Hand 
workers who wrap and pack small objects, such 
as crackers, glassware, candy, or who label cans, 
have also an occupation as monotonous as those 
connected with the use of machinery. 

When this routine work is continued day after 
day, week after week, it becomes deadening and 
stupefying. The man becomes almost a machine. 
All interest in the work vanishes. He becomes 
a passive agent in a great industry, and is known 
only by his number. Professor Commons has 
drawn the following depressing word-picture of 
the worker feeding a semi-automatic machine. 
^^But the work is monotonous— just one or two 
operations, hour after hour, ten hours a day, 
sixty hours a week." The worker at the ma- 
chine ^' keeps on — his mind shrinks — he never 
thinks of his work unless something goes wrong 



38 The Industrialism of To-Day 

— he thinks of other things— his childhood, his 
former playmates— his days and nights of fun 
and wild oats — anything to keep his mind off 
from the deadly monotony." And yet many 
more fortunately circumstanced individuals do 
not understand why the worker in his moments 
of leisure demands excitement, thrills, a climax. 
Excesses, carousals, the melodrama, are inevi- 
table reactions from the excessive and deadening 
monotony of daily work. 

4. Tendencies in Agriculture. — The last de- 
cennial period disclosed some very significant 
tendencies in agriculture. The average acreage 
per farm declined from 146.2 in 1900 to 138.1 in 
1910. But the average value of all property per 
farm increased from $3,563 to $6,444. In the 
immediately preceding decades the increase in 
farm values was almost a negligible quantity, — 
from 1860 to 1900 inclusive the value per farm 
was over $3,000 and less than $4,000. The aver- 
age value of all property per acre of land in farms 
was $24.37 in 1900 and $46.64 in 1910 ; the aver- 
age value of the land per acre was $15.57 and 
$32.40 respectively. The average investment per 
farm increased remarkably during the ten-year 
period. This considerable rise in the market 
value of farms has added to the obstacles which 
confront the young man without money who 
seeks to become a farm owner. Statistics indi- 
cate that an increase in tenancy and an increase 
in land values went hand in hand during the 
decade. The percentage of tenancy is, however^ 



Tendencies in Agriculture 39 

high throughout the South where land values are 
low ; but this is due in a large measure to the 
number of Negro tenants. 

One of the great evils of tenancy in the United 
States is the frequent moving of tenants from 
farm to farm. '^In the South," writes an au- 
thority, ^^ about half the tenants move every 
year.'' In the North, the average period is 
somewhat longer. The constant shifting of 
tenants causes a double difficulty. It tends to 
wear out the soil and sooner or later tends to 
impoverish the farmers working the land. In 
the second place, the frequent moving from farm 
to farm weakens the neighborhood ties, dimin- 
ishes interest in local affairs, prevents the de- 
velopment of strong community organizations of 
various kinds. ^ 

In the West North Central States — Minnesota, 
Iowa, Missouri, North and South Dakota, 
Nebraska, and Kansas — the average number of 
acres per farm increased from 189.5 in 1900 to 
209.6 in 1910. In the East North Central States 
— Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wis- 
consin — the figures are 102.4 and 105.0 respect- 
ively. In the above-named States which, if the 
production of cotton is excluded, produce the 
great bulk of our staple agricultural products, 
the average size of farms and the average value 
per acre are increasing. These figures are 
portentous of great changes in the life and 

^ Hibbard, Quarterly Journal of Economics j May, 1913, pp. 
495-496. 



40 The Industrialism of To- Day 

activity of our farmers and farm laborers in 
the North. And the probable introduction of a 
successful mechanical cotton picker in the South 
will doubtless revolutionize the rural life in that 
section. 

This tendency towards larger farms in the 
North Central States will probably be accelerated 
during the next decade or two. An increasing 
use of mechanical tractors and gang plows may 
be expected, and these can be most efficiently 
utilized upon large farms. On the experimental 
farm of Perdue University, it is reported that a 
thirty horse-power kerosene engine, hitched to a 
giant plow having fifty bottoms and turning fifty 
furrows simultaneously, plowed an acre in four 
and one- fourth minutes. It seems probable that 
important savings may follow the substitution of 
the tractor for the horse. At present the prices 
of agricultural products are high and the op- 
portunities for extensive investment in railway 
and manufacturing enterprises are not as great 
relatively as were found up to the last decade or 
two. These two facts indicate a rush of capital 
into agriculture in the not distant future. The 
application of capital on a large scale, the ap- 
peal to scientific agriculture, and the introduc- 
tion of scientific management and cost account- 
ing, may be expected to work marvellous 
changes. Many omens of changes to come may 
be discerned. 

The following census statistics are indicative of 
present tendencies in agriculture. 



Tendencies in Agriculture 4I 

Siee of farms. Per cent, of totnl, 

jgio jgoo 

Under 20 acres 1.0 ... 0.9 

20 to 49 '' . 5.2 ... 5.0 

50 to 99 ** 11.7 . . . 11.8 

100 to 174 ** 23.4 . . .23.0 

175 to 499 '' 30.2 . . . 27.8 

500 to 999 '' . 9.5 .. . 8.1 

1,000 acres and over 19.1. . .23.6 

These figures indicate that the typical farm of the 
near future is to contain from 175 to 1,000 acres. 
There were, in 1910, 50,135 farms containing 
1,000 or more acres each ; in 1900, the number 
was 47,160. One-half of the big farms are found 
in the West North Central and the West South 
Central States, composing the first two tiers of 
States west of the Mississippi Eiver. In the 
West North Central States, the acreage in farms 
containing 500 to 999 acres each increased ap- 
proximately fifty per cent, in the ten years. In 
the South Atlantic and East South Central States, 
the acreage in small farms containing twenty to 
forty-nine acres increased very materially. The 
tenant farms of the South are small. The tenant, 
especially the Negro tenant, in the South is more 
rigidly supervised and controlled by the land 
owner than in the North. In fact, leasing cotton 
lands in small tracts is practically a method of 
operating a plantation. In the new renting 
system which is being developed in Oklahoma 
and Texas, the tenant agrees to work under the 
supervision of the owner. Under such condi- 
tions, the tenant is placed in a position similar 
to the sub-contracting foreman in a manufacture 



42 The Industrialism of To-Day 

ing establishment. The conditions which make 
for sweating in agriculture are being prepared. 

The Taft farm or ranch in Texas contains about 
150 square miles, or nearly 100,000 acres, of ex- 
cellent farming land. The farm is supervised by 
an agricultural expert. Farming on this big 
farm is scientific and large-scale. The company 
owning and operating the farm also operates its 
own packing house, cotton gins, an ice plant, a 
machine shop for repairing, and an electric 
lighting plant. The workers live in company 
houses and buy at company stores. The factory 
system is here taken to the farm. The farm 
laborers work in gangs under overseers who in 
turn are subordinate to other managers, and so 
on up to the expert in charge. The farm laborer 
on this giant farm, like the factory worker, is a 
mere cog in a great machine. The Taft farm is 
an extreme example of the new type of '^bo- 
nanza" farms. 

5. ** Satellite Cities.**— On the outskirts of 
many large American cities are smaller clusters 
of home and business establishments scattered in 
an irregular manner around some huge manufac- 
turing plant. These are the ^^ satellite cities'' 
which big industries have built at some distance 
from the city proper in order to avoid high rents 
or the exactions of labor organizations, or for 
some other reason held to be good by the employ- 
ing corporation. The greatest of these is Gary, 
Indiana, — a city built on the sandy shores of 
Lake Michigan according to the deliberate plan 



" Satellite Cities '' 43 

of the United Steel Corporation. ^^Gary is 
probably the greatest single calculated achieve- 
ment of America's master industry. A score of 
steel towns have grown slowly from small begin- 
nings. But the creators of Gary planned de novo 
a city which in five years attained a size that re- 
quired thirty years of growth at Homestead, and 
which is not unlikely to become the second city 
in Indiana before many decades pass.^' ^ Almost 
as by magic a gigantic corporation caused the 
sandy waste to become a city with homes, paved 
streets, schools, churches, stores, and great steel 
mills, and peopled it with a busy and hetero- 
geneous population. The great financial power 
thus exhibited necessarily is a potent factor for 
good or ill upon the lives of thousands who con- 
gregate in the ^^ satellite city.'' The voters in 
the municipality are the employees of the great 
corporation. The company becomes a powerful 
factor in promotiDg or in checking the growth of 
vice and immorality. Political and industrial 
power is in the satellite city clearly and unmis- 
takably concentrated in the hands of the com- 
pany. 

Even small cities are developing ^^satellites'' 
in which reside the workers for some manufac- 
turing plant. For example, in Albion, a town 
of six thousand inhabitants, is found a consider- 
able group of houses owned by a manufacturing 
company. Nearly all of the wage workers em- 
ployed by the company live in this settlement. 
^ G. R, Taylor, The Survey, March 1, 1913, 



44 The Industrialism of To-Day 

They are thus set apart from the rest of the town. 
Many cannot speak the English language. These 
workers live in houses innocent of modern con- 
veniences. The yards and streets are devoid of 
anything which makes for beauty. The writer 
visited the second story of one of these company 
houses in the two small rooms of which at least 
twenty-five men sleep and live during their lei- 
sure time. Here were working men, many of them 
recent immigrants, living in filth and squalor, 
and under conditions which cannot make for good 
citizenship. Yet this little community is prac- 
tically neglected by the people living elsewhere 
in the city. True it is that few of us know ^^ how 
the other half lives.'' 

6, Scientific Management. — Nearly all of 
the great expanse of fertile land within the bor- 
ders of the United States has passed into the 
hands of private owners, and the vast natural 
resources of the nation have been tapped. We 
can no longer tolerate the wastefulness and the 
rule-of-thumb methods of the pioneer. Effi- 
ciency and conservation are now the magic 
words. Cost accounting, the card index, the stop 
watch, and the adding machine are some of the 
necessary accessories of efficiency engineering or 
scientific management. Expenses of production 
are accurately determined ; and both men and 
machines are carefully and scientifically studied. 
'' The primitive competition of employer against 
employer is a children's game compared with the 
modern competition of manager against manager 



Scientific Management 45 

checked up every month by the cold statistics of 
cost. Under this system managers go down like 
tenpins, or up like Schwab. They ^hire and 
fire ' their employees, promote and derate their 
subordinates, with the precision of rapid-fire 
guns. Under their exact system of cost they 
measure a man as they do coal, iron, and kilo- 
watts, and labor becomes literally, what it has 
been by analogy, a commodity. If one be a 
scientist or an engineer one can but admire the 
marvellous results. The astounding reductions 
of cost, the unheard-of efSciency of labor, the 
precise methods of scientific experiment and 
tests, reveal a new field of conquest of the human 
mind.'' ^ 

The potentialities of scientific management 
seem enormous. The application of scientific 
principles to such apparently simple tasks as 
bricklaying, shovelling, or carrying pig iron has 
demonstrated that many of the motions of the 
average worker are unnecessary, and that much 
more work may be performed in a day without in- 
creased fatigue. Scientific management doubtless 
will greatly increase the per capita output. But 
like the introduction of machinery, scientific man- 
agement bids fair to cause ^* another intensive, 
resistless reordering of industrial life '' ; and this 
unfortunately often means for many wage earners 
unemployment and uncertainty. A recent book 
on scientific management is authority for the state- 

^ Commons, The American Journal of Sociology^ Vol. XIII, 
pp. 757-758. 



46 The Industrialism of To-Day 

ment that one company '^ cut its shop force from 
100 men to 70, and at the same time increased 
its output 300 per cent./'— by using the methods 
of scientific management. The wage earners 
naturally fear that this new system devised and 
proposed by their employers, and which is being 
forced upon them without their consent, is some 
subtle method of getting more out of employees 
without increasing the size of the pay checks. 
Before the hearty cooperation of the employees 
can be obtained, this fear, born of past experi- 
ence with the introduction of machinery, must 
be dispelled. Scientific management has its 
psychological side. It cannot achieve its fullest 
success until the employees see more in it than a 
subtle means of speeding them. Certainly the 
workers ought to share in the benefits which flow 
from efficiency engineering. And they are justi- 
fied in taking steps through their organizations 
to obtain a share in the benefits which are to 
come from scientific management. 

7. The Relations of Employer to Employee. 
— Prom the early days when the captives in battle 
were first forced to till the soil for the benefit of 
their conquerors, through the long eras of slavery 
and serfdom, to the modern wage system, with its 
definite payment of money wages, there has been 
a fundamental difierence in view-point between 
the worker on one hand, and the master, feudal 
landlord, or employer, on the other. The latter 
is interested primarily in the product of the 
worker's toil, and only secondarily in the welfare 



Relations of Employer to Employee 47 

and uplift of the toiler. The modern employer is 
more humane than his prototype ; but the basic 
incentive in his demand for workers is old. The 
workers, ancient, medieval, or modern, were and 
are, of course, self-centred. They have been 
dragged into the active work of the world un- 
willingly, as if by the hair of the head. • Com- 
pulsion, — the lash, fear of hunger and of the lack 
of comforts, — has been the potent, but negative, 
force which has throughout the years hastened 
the steps of the lagging worker. Work has been 
to the worker a means to an end, — escape from 
the lash of the master or to gain a livelihood. To 
the employer, or master, productive activity on 
the part of the mass of people is the excuse for 
their existence. The workers in this new era of 
great productivity are catching the vision that 
work should be performed for the sake of leisure 
and comfort for themselves. Modern democracy 
is emphasizing, in the phraseology of another, 
not more respect for men, but respect for more 
men. *^ More respect for men ' ' is the older idea ; 
^^ respect for more men'^ is a phrase pregnant 
with hope of better living conditions for the 
masses. But this is little more than a vision as 
yet ; and few are the employers who have even 
caught a glimpse of this inspiring ideal. 

The typical employer of to-day is a corporation. 
Under present-day conditions, the urge for divi- 
dends is often the potent and compelling pressure 
which moulds the policy of a large corporation. 
And this insistent yearning for dividends pro- 



48 The Industrialism of To-Day 

ceeds usually from distant and widely scattered 
stockholders who know little or nothing of the 
conditions in the industry, the wages paid, the 
length of the working day, or the protection pro- 
vided against accident. But this keen demand 
for dividends is more potent in determining the 
policy of the corporation than was the desire for 
profits in the ante-corporation days of ^^person- 
alized '^ management. When the proprietor 
knew each man by name, the settlement of griev- 
ances required a very different method of pro- 
cedure than it does when the workers are num- 
bered and the employer is a legal person, — a 
corporation. The elimination of the personal 
equation is balanced, however, by the potency of 
the growing ideal of democracy, and by the weak- 
ening of the older idea of a depressed working 
class, inherited from the days of slavery and serf- 
dom. Unfortunately, while the modern worker 
has secured a modicum of independence, he has 
become a cog in a big industrial machine and he 
is unable to grasp the import of his work. ^' The 
man in the factory as well as the man with the 
hoe, '^ writes Miss Jane Addams, ^^ has a grievance 
beyond being overworked and disinherited in 
that he does not know what it is all abouf 

Further analysis of the view-points held by the 
representatives of labor and capital will bear 
fruit. The producer and the consumer of sugar 
or of steel have opposing interests, — the former 
desires to get high prices for his output and the 
latter wishes to buy at a bargain. Ingenious 



Relations of Employer to Employee 49 

hair-splitting and soft words will not materially 
change this situation. The wage worker is a 
seller of labor power and a business firm is the 
purchaser of that commodity. While both have 
certain interests in common, as bargainers for the 
purchase and sale of labor power, their interests 
are by no means identical. 

The training, experience, and social life of the 
manager of a business enterprise and that of the 
manual worker employed by the firm, are quite 
dissimilar. One is closely in touch with the 
world of buying and selling, the other with a nar- 
row portion of the technical side of the business ; 
one obtains experience in the financial world, the 
other in the sphere of manual industry ; and the 
two live in very different sections of the city or 
town, have different circles of friends, and are out 
of close touch with each other during the working 
and during the leisure period of the day. 

The clashing economic interests, the dissimilar 
working experience, and the separate spheres of 
social activity, produce a situation which is not 
conducive to harmonious relations between em- 
ployer and employee. As a consequence, each is 
inclined to under-emphasize the ability, the im- 
portance of the function, and the virtues of the 
other. Yet very frequently when the represent- 
atives of the two can be brought together and 
can get a glimpse of the view-point of the other, 
more or less satisfactory compromises can be 
made, and a wage bargain consummated which 
obviates the resort to industrial warfare. 



50 The Industrialism of To-Day 

Summary 

The United States is rapidly becoming a pre- 
dominantly urban community. 

The famous American frontier line has faded 
away ; and the cities are beginning to dominate 
in our social and political life. 

Americans must learn to live and to grow strong 
in urban communities. 

Eeaction from routine work is a cause of ex- 
cesses. 

In agriculture, tenancy is increasing and land 
values are rising. 

The introduction of scientific management 
tends to increase the efl&ciency of a manufactur- 
ing plant ; but the workers fear that it is some 
subtle means of speeding up. 

The growth of large-scale production and of 
corporate management has tended to destroy the 
personal nexus between employer and employee. 
Two distinct and clashing view-points are devel- 
oped. 

Suggestive Questions 

Is the Church doing its part in ^' humanizing '^ 
our cities *? 

Long-continued drudgery and monotonous rou- 
tine are deadening and debilitating. What atti- 
tude is your church taking in regard to the long 
day, the seven-day week, and the absence of 
wholesome recreation*? What should be its atti- 
tude? 

Is a ^^ satellite'^ community located in or near 
your city ? What do you know of the conditions 
in that community *? 



Ill 

THE EFFECT OF INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 
UPON THE HOME AND HOME LIFE 

THE Home of the Pioneer. — The typical 
American home of preceding genera- 
tions was situated on a farm. It was 
somewhat isolated from other homes. The iso- 
lated farmhouse is proudly pointed to as the 
birthplace of all beloved Americans from Wash- 
ington to McKinley. This traditional home was 
in early days a centre of a considerable number 
of small-scale industries, — farming, dairying, 
slaughtering, carpentering, tool and implement 
making, sheep raising, fuel producing, soap 
making, cloth making, cooking, and so on 
through a long list of occupations. In a large 
measure the pioneer farm was a self-contained 
economic unit. It consumed nearly all that it 
produced and consumed little which was not 
there produced. Iron tools, sugar, spices, 
furniture, cooking utensils, dishes, and a few 
other things came from the outside world. 
Neighbors occasionally changed works. From 
time to time, the father would take a wagon load 
of wheat, or drive a few head of cattle, to the 
nearest town. The water supply, milk supply, v 
food supply, and the supply of clothing and \ 

5^ 



52 Effect Upon the Home and Home Life 

shelter were largely matters of home efforts. 
The isolated environment reduced the problems 
of social and political life to a minimum. Each 
family worked and lived largely for itself with- 
out reference to the outside world. The industrial 
problems were simple, and the problems of each 
family were worked out in no small measure by 
themselves. 

2. The Urban Home. — As time passed the 
city gained on the rural districts, and, also, the 
farm lost many of its industrial functions. The 
new-born giant, the factory, has reached out to 
the farm and the home, and has taken from both 
certain kinds of work. The tj^pical home is no 
longer the isolated, many-functioned, rural farm- 
house ; it is the village or city house. Indeed, 
in the days of good roads, rural mail delivery, 
suburban electric lines, telephones, and numerous 
other conveniences, the isolated home is becom- 
ing uncommon even in the rural districts. The 
farmer is being rapidly transformed into a busi- 
ness man. He is improving the methods of pro- 
duction ; and he is giving much attention to 
marketing his products. 

The effect of these changes upon the home has 
been at least threefold : (1) it has lost many of its 
industrial functions ; (2) it has been brought into 
close touch with other homes, and (3) it is now 
dependent upon the outside world for its necessary 
supplies, and, consequently, the cleanliness and . 
purity of such supplies depend upon agencies 
operating outside the residence of the family. 



The Process of Adjustment 53 

On the other hand, the mobility of the popula- 
tion to-day is greater than in earlier days. The 
percentage of rented homes is greater in both 
city and country than it was a generation or 
two ago. Families change their residence fre- 
quently. This mobility tends to prevent the de- 
velopment of affection for town or city. It 
weakens the ties which bind the family to the 
community, the school, and the church. 

3. The Process of Adj ustment. — The process 
of adjusting our ideals of home and home life de- 
veloped during the period when the old isolated- 
farmhouse home was the typical home, to fit the 
conditions of home making in modern towns and 
cities is a very difficult one. Old ideals relating 
to the home, like those relating to religious be- 
liefs and educational methods, change slowly and 
only under great and steady pressure. There is 
a powerful social inertia which prevents rapid 
modifications in ideals and customs. We are too 
prone to insist without careful consideration that 
the old-fashioned isolated home is the best pos- 
sible sort of home for all peoples and all time. 
But the relentless and unsentimental industrial 
changes of recent years are forcing a new situa- 
tion upon us. 

4. Woman's Place in the Home. — Indus- 
trial progress during the last few generations has 
vitally affected the industrial functions of the 
home, and in so doing has materially altered 
woman's place in the home and her relation to 
her husband. The farmer's wife was, and in a 



54 Effect Upon the Home and Home Life 

large measure still is, a co-laborer with her hus- 
band and the older children for a common end. 
A generation ago she was a co-producer of staple 
and salable products. To-day, the woman in 
the household can in no way directly aid her 
husband in his efforts to earn a living in shop, 
store, mine or office. She may aid him in many 
ways but she is no longer his co-laborer in 
earning a living, nor are the children of the 
family unless they work outside the home circle. 
If the children work, it may be in another part 
of the town, in another shop, or in another de- 
partment of the same shop. 

The factory in seizing the industrial functions 
of the home and by drawing homes so close to- 
gether, has thrust upon the nation several com- 
plex problems. Throughout the ages woman has 
been an industrial worker in the home. Shall 
she now follow industry out of the home ? But 
the factory is routinized ; it is a deadening and 
dehumanizing institution. Again, when the 
mother leaves the home, what will become of the 
children? If she attempts to bring her tradi- 
tional forms of work back into the home in com- 
petition with the factory, the result invariably 
spells sweat-shop. Home industry is no longer a 
dignified phrase. Again, the children have lost 
their opportunity for home work and for many 
forms of training formerly afforded by the home. 
The factory offers at best only a sorry substitute 
for the early home training which our fathers 
and grandfathers received. 



Relation of Children to Parents 55 

Professor Noyes has presented the situation in 
our large cities very clearly and forcefully. ^* As 
the result of the prevalent conditions of home 
life in the tenement, the child is inevitably forced 
out into the street, not only during the daytime, 
but, as common observation shows, until late at 
night, not only in good weather but in foul. The 
child has nothing to do at home unless, perhaps, 
his home be a sweat-shop where he works ; other- 
wise he is only in the way there. In the evening 
he cannot go to sleep even if he stays there on 
account of the talk and work, and so he often 
runs in the street until ten, eleven or twelve 
o^clock. As a result it is no exaggeration to say 
that the tenement child grows up on the street, 
where he is 'educated with fatal precision.''' 
**The dilemma for the city child seems to be 
either painful exhaustion and demoralizing work 
on the one hand or futile idleness and its conse- 
quent immorality on the other. " This dilemma 
is one which did not confront the typical Amer- 
ican boy of a generation ago ; but to-day the 
problem is before us. And the cities are grow- 
ing rapidly. 

5. Relation of Children to Parents. — As has 
been indicated, in the town or city the home 
offers little opportunity to the child for regular 
and useful tasks. Unless the child enters the 
factory, store, ofiSce, or the street trades as a wage 
earner, he is an economic burden to the family. 
And, if he does go into those industries while 
still of school age, he is likely to be forced into 



56 Effect Upon the Home and Home Life 

^^ blind-alley" occupations presenting few oppor- 
tunities for future usefulness. On the contrary, 
on the pioneer farm children were economic as- 
sets. They could be utilized to do many odd jobs 
and various kinds of work not requiring consid- 
erable muscular development. And this work, 
unless the child was pushed too hard, was educa- 
tive and developmental. Too frequently in our 
discussions of the home and home life, we ignore 
this marked and significant change in the relation 
of children to parents, or neglect to discuss its 
effect upon the continuity of family life. For it 
must not be forgotten that the family was evolved 
as a social institution for ^' advantages in toil " as 
well as for the preservation of the race. 

6. The Functions of the Home. — The iso- 
lated farm-home had plenty of play space for the 
small children. The postage-stamp yard or the 
yardless home of to-day complicates the amuse- 
ment problem. The chores of the farm-home and 
the almost unlimited play space offered adequate 
opportunity for the boy and girl to exercise and 
to expend the surplus energy of childhood. But 
the very forces which have taken away the chores 
have also eliminated the home playground. The 
alternatives offered are little or no play and too 
much work under conditions which do not edu- 
cate, or no work and too much idleness under 
conditions which often make for moral degen- 
eracy. The solution is an important part of the 
educational problem of the community. The 
effect of the machine and the factory has been to 



The Home in the " Good Old Days " 57 

take industry out of the home and to call the 
women and children to the factory. The machine 
and the factory are here as permanent industrial 
agencies. The clock cannot, be turned back- 
wards ; society will not return to the hand-tool 
stage of industrial development. Whether the 
effects of machine industry upon home life be 
good, bad or indifferent is a matter chiefly of 
academic interest. The big, pulsing, practical 
question relates to the improvement and hu- 
manizing of the machine and the factory. 
New factors have entered the problem, and 
we must solve it without eliminating those new 
factors. 

7. The Home in the '' Good Old Days."— 
The beautiful picture painted by certain enthu- 
siasts in regard to the good old times and the old- 
fashioned home is by no means accurate. The 
glamor of the past is upon it. And the glamor 
of the past is one form of the powerful lure of 
the far-away and uncommon which leads men and 
women to overemphasize the distant and the un- 
usual, and to underestimate the present, the com- 
mon, and the tangible. The bright spots in the 
picture of the traditional home are over-colored, 
and the hard, never-ending toil in the monoto- 
nous life of the housewife is carefully concealed 
from the observer. The mother was always at 
home. Her work drove her unceasingly. She 
knew little or nothing of the great outside world ; 
and too often she was a prematurely aged woman. 
Indeed, the average home of two or three gener- 



58 Effect Upon the Home and Home Life 

ations ago, if reproduced to-day in one of our 
towns or cities, would be called a sweat-shop of 
an inefficient type. 

8. Community Effort. — The replacement of 
the isolated farm-home by the town and city 
home as the typical American home, causes more 
and more stress to be laid upon community prob- 
lems. The purity of the food, water and milk 
supply, the disposal of wastes, the control of con- 
tagious diseases, and the moral influences affect- 
ing the children of the family were matters of 
little import to the primitive or frontier com- 
munity. Each family solved its own local prob- 
lems ; and the great mass of its problems were 
local. To-day, a corporation, municipal or pri- 
vate, pumps water into the home, a milk com- 
pany brings milk to your door from distant 
dairies, meat is purchased from a Chicago pack- 
ing house and breakfast food from Battle Creek, 
garbage collection and a sewage system are neces- 
sities, and contagious diseases, if uncontrolled, 
readily spread throughout a community, the sa- 
loon and the cheap amusement house are moral 
menaces to each and every home in the commu- 
nity. The individual householder has seen func- 
tion after function, process after process, literally 
wrested from his grasp. 

To-day, the individual alone is almost helpless 
to cope with the situation born of the modern 
machine process. With reluctance, fostered by 
the false and inherited pride of individual self- 
sufficiency, American families are finally seeing 



Summary 59 

new visions. The purity of foods, the cleanliness 
of the house, the elimination of moral and phys- 
ical contagion, the disposal of wastes, and the 
like, are now becoming recognized, and rightly 
so, as community problems. ^'I will '' is being 
replaced by ''we will'' as an efficient, effective 
and practical slogan. Housekeeping and home- 
making are now municipal and national prob- 
lems. Home is now spread city-, state-, nation- 
wide. A thousand hands rock the cradle ; and 
these hands can only be controlled from outside 
the four walls of the house in which the family 
lives. The Church should exert its powerful in- 
fluence towards forcing community problems 
upon the municipality and the state. And it 
should firmly stand for efficient work on the part 
of the officials. 

Summary 

The contrast between the function of the rural 
home of the pioneer and the home of to-day's city 
dweller is striking. 

Americans are now in a trying process of 
adjustment to new home conditions and environ- 
ments. 

The work of women has been transformed ; and 
the relations between parents and children have 
suffered certain modifications. 

The home in the ''good old days" was, how- 
ever, by no means ideal. 

The replacement of the isolated farmhouse by 
the urban residence as the typical American 
home forces us to place more emphasis upon 
community action. 



6o Effect Upon the Home and Home Life 

Suggestive Questions 

Inefficiency and corruption on tlie part of mu- 
nicipal officials strike a blow at American civili- 
zation. Can our churches aid in generating a 
public sentiment which will demand good clean 
government even though it be costly and even 
though it demands self-sacrifice from all good 
citizens ? 

What is your church doing for the young peo- 
ple of the community? 

How far is the entrance of women into industry 
to be regarded as desirable ? 



IV 
INDUSTRY AND THE SCHOOL SYSTEM 

EDUCATION is a Labor-saving De- 
vice. — The fundamental purpose of edu- 
cation is to place in the hands of an 
incoming generation the knowledge and the 
results of the experience of the generation now 
in control of affairs. Education is a labor- 
saving device. If each and every generation 
were obliged to begin at the bottom and re- 
capitulate the growth and experience of all 
preceding generations, progress would neces- 
sarily be almost nil. Education formally pre- 
sented in connection with a school system or 
informally imparted at home, in the shop or 
elsewhere, enables the young to obtain within 
a comparatively short time the fundamentals of 
the scientific, technical, and cultural achieve- 
ments of the race. Upon this foundation, further 
development may proceed. ^* It is as if a torch- 
bearer began millions of years ago running down 
the ages with his light, at first but a feeble spark, 
which as he fell breathless he passed to another 
and he in turn to another, the torch growing and 
flaming more brightly until at last it has been 
committed to our hands,'' and our duty it is to 
pass the torch to another well -prepared genera- 
tion to carry a little farther. 

6i 



62 Industry and the School System 

2. Education may be a Progressive or a 
Reactionary Force. — The scope of modern edu- 
cation is not confined to the mere passive transfer 
of the torch of experience. Education is more 
than Chinese formalism and memory drill. The 
modern educational system should serve to aid 
the runner in keeping his sense of direction, in 
avoiding dangers and in overcoming obstacles in 
new and untrodden territory. The role to be 
played by the school in the twentieth century is, 
indeed, of great importance. The school may 
become a lamp to guide the feet of the inexperi- 
enced, or it may be a millstone about the neck 
of the eager, hopeful youth. The keystone in 
the arch of true democracy is education ; but a 
school system may be so organized and utilized 
as to become a powerful obstacle in the path 
towards a higher and a better civilization. 

3. Education should be a Directive Agent. 
— The true function of education is to be a social 
directive agent, and to reduce social maladjust- 
ments ; or, in other words, to be the trusted 
servant of sociology. The only stable standard of 
educational values is sociological. Heretofore, 
educational advance has lagged behind social 
progress. Science is gathering data for directive, 
purposeful social action ; and it is the function 
of sociology, the science of human society, to re- 
duce the friction which retards and oftentimes 
temporarily diverts the onward march of human 
progress. Since sociology is still distant from a 
true scientific basis, education must also remain 



Changing Sphere of Formal Education 63 

in a measure unscientific. Only general rules 
can be laid down 5 and men having dififerent 
ideals and interests will necessarily differ in re- 
gard to them. No one is justified, however, in 
condemning or approving an educational process 
or method because it is old or because it is new. 
Each and every educational project, method, and 
ideal, old or new, should be constantly subjected 
to careful and unbiased scrutiny from two dis- 
similar standpoints — that of psychology and that 
of sociology, The educator, let it be repeated, 
who overlooks one or both of these criteria stands 
condemned in the light of modern scientific and 
historical knowledge. He has not grasped the 
fundamentals of pedagogical science. His place 
is in the machine-shop or the counting-room, not 
in the school. 

4. The Changing Sphere of Formal Educa- 
tion. — Education in its broadest sense includes 
all of the personal experience which forms a 
man's character and personality. Education 
from this broad view-point is life, and may be 
imparted in an informal as well as a formal way. 
Education in the narrower and more technical 
sense is the training imparted in a formal way 
through the instrumentality of a system of 
schools. Human progress not only increases the 
sum total of experience to be imparted to a new 
generation, but it also tends to shift the line of 
demarkation between formal and informal edu- 
cation. Among primitive peoples education was 
entirely informal ; but among modern people of 



64 Industry and the School System 

the industrial type, the sphere of formal edu- 
cation has seriously encroached upon the pre- 
serves of informal education. The home and the 
shop have been deprived by the march of modem 
industry of many of their educational functions. 
Formal or school education has suddenly as- 
sumed a dignity and importance unknown to it 
in the past history of mankind. The school is as- 
suming new educational functions. The enlarge- 
ment and enrichment of the school curriculum 
is the result of somewhat naive attempts to meet 
the requirements of a new and bewildering in- 
dustrial situation, complicated by the rapid 
growth of crowded urban communities. Further- 
more, since industry is coming to mean efficiently 
applied science the well -trained worker is the 
need of the hour. 

5. New Educational Ideals are Needed. — 
The classic concept of formal education as 
memory drill and mental gymnastics is a per- 
verted product of an epoch before the factory 
became an important industrial instrument. 
Twisted and distorted, it has come down to the 
present generation from the time when education 
was in a large measure informal, when the home 
and the small shop readily - provided adequate 
training for all except the few who entered the 
professions. One of the big problems of the 
school of to-day is that of harmonizing our edu- 
cational ideals with the new industrial situation. 
In short, the school ought to teach the things 
which the twentieth century needs, not what 



Aim of the American Public School 65 

the traditions of the eighteenth or the nineteenth 
century hold dear. 

6. What should the American Public School 
Aim to Accomplish ? — In view of the present 
industrial situation, what should the American 
public school system aim to accomplish ? This 
question, above all others connected with edu- 
cational matters, needs at the present moment 
clear, careful, and dispassionate discussion. The 
answers which an earnest and persistent inquirer 
will receive to this important question will be al- 
most as numerous as the number of people inter- 
rogated. The American people have made a 
fetish of their public school system and of com- 
pulsory education. Yet they persistently cling 
to a multitude of more or less nebulous and con- 
flicting opinions as to the character of the product 
of their school system. But a careful inspection 
and classification of the various views as to the 
nature of educational standards will enable us to 
thrust them into four pigeonholes labelled : — cul- 
tural, practical, psychological, and social. Surely 
the first step towards transmuting our educational 
system into a piece of scientific mechanism con- 
sists in definitely analyzing the aims and ideals 
which the American people hold as to the char- 
acter of the product sent forth from our many 
public schools. An analysis of these four edu- 
cational sta^- lards is therefore fundamental to 
any real progress towards a systematic modi- 
fication of the school and college curriculum. 

At the outset, unfortunately, it must be noted 



66 Industry and the School System 

that these standards are somewhat antagonistic, 
— and compromise will be difficult. Educational 
ideals are moulded by group ideals, group in- 
terests, and group inter-relationships. The em- 
ployers' ideal of an adequate and suitable school 
system does not coincide with the one uppermost 
in the minds of their employees. The merchant, 
the manufacturer, the banker, the teacher, and 
the wage earner see the educational problem 
from different angles ; and each will tenaciously 
cling to his own peculiar interpretation of the 
problem. And since these groups are not stable 
and unchanging, our educational policy con- 
stantly suffers modification. The formation and 
deformation of educational ideals and the equat- 
ing of educational values proceed under the guid- 
ing pressure of constantly shifting interests and 
groups. The study of educational standards, 
values and methods is, therefore, intimately con- 
nected with the study of industrial evolution. 
And changes which bring new groups and in- 
terests to the front or modify old ones call new 
educational ideals into being and modify edu- 
cational values. 

7. The Four Standards. — The cultural stand- 
ard shines in the pale reflected light of the past ; 
it is the product of an epoch in which trade and 
industry did not bulk large in the direct determi- 
nation of educational values and methods. The 
prestige which clings to the cultural or classical 
form of education is purely traditional and in- 
herited ; it is based in no small measure upon 



The Four Standards 67 

class prejudice. Indeed the cultural form of 
modern education was formerly the practical ; 
it was once a part of the necessary training of the 
professional man. By a curious, but not un- 
usual, process of slow evolution classical train- 
ing is now esteemed because it bestows upon 
its possessors ideals and mannerisms which are 
directly opposite to those appertaining to pres- 
ent-day practical education. Modern cultural or 
classical education which is so disdainful of any- 
thing pertaining to the bread-and-butter side of 
life, is in reality an outgrown, out-of-date form 
of practical education. Such is the irony of hu- 
man progress. The effect of cultural education 
is to carry old ideals, habits of thought and class 
demarkations down into modern industrial so- 
ciety. It leads to conservatism, to foppishness 
and disdain for the struggling, toiling and sweat- 
ing mass of humanity ; and it tends to focus the 
mind upon problems which do not directly and 
vitally touch modern complex life. Cultural 
education directs the attention towards the dis- 
tant, the uncommon, the immaterial, and the 
conventional. The cultural ideal glorifies the 
safe and sane, and art for art's sake ; but it care- 
fully and conscientiously avoids contact with the 
radical or the insurgent. The old shaded paths 
of quietude and isolation are sought. The scholar 
in search of the cultural goal will not linger in 
^Hhe house by the side of the road where the 
race of men pass by.'' The cultural ideal of edu- 
cation is chiefly valued because it is to be at- 



68 Industry and the School System 

tained only by the chosen and sheltered few. Its 
charm, like that of the diamond, is in no small 
measure due to scarcity and exclusiveness. 

Eecent psychological study and investigation 
show that a certain variety and sequence of train- 
iug are necessary in order that each and every 
individual may develop his maximum mental 
and manual ability. The psychological demand 
is for a well-rounded development of the student. 
Scientific students of child life are evaluating the 
curriculum and pedagogical methods from the 
psychological standpoint. 

The social criterion for educational efficiency 
is based upon dhe democratic demand for good 
citizenship and for racial efficiency. It places a 
high valuation upon that which tends to break 
down class demarkation, to reduce artificial 
inequality and to uplift the human race as a 
whole. This criterion has not as yet been 
couched in as well-defined terras as the other 
three. Its advocates still speak in phrases which 
partake of the nature of glittering generalities. 

On the other hand, the practical standard of 
educational values is applied to the mass of hu- 
man workers, the hewers of wood and the 
drawers of water. The practical standard is 
important because of the urgent need for a con- 
siderable variety of trained and efficient workers 
in the various occupations of the industrial, 
commercial, and clerical world. Commercial, 
trade, industrial, agricultural, and professional 
training are grouped under the head of practical 



Insistent Demand for Practical Education 69 

education. To-day the emphasis is placed upon 
trade and commercial education ; but professional 
training for the law, theology, medicine, and 
pedagogy was in former generations the most 
important form of the practical work of the 
educational system. 

8. The Insistent Demand for Practical 
Education. — New conditions in the business 
world are causing the insistent demand for cer- 
tain forms of practical — trade or vocational — 
education. Industry has become a huge, articu- 
lated piece of social mechanism in which each 
working man is reduced to the subordinate posi- 
tion of a cog or a lever. To adjust nicely the 
industrial machine, each human cog must be 
trained or formed for his particular and spe- 
cialized position. But profits and the shop edu- 
cation of apprentices are incompatible in the 
systematized factories where the pace is swift. 
As a consequence employers, finding the former 
sources of skilled men drying up, turn frantically 
to the public school system for relief. The 
manufacturers of this country were not en- 
thusiastically interested in manual training 
which was introduced into the grades as a 
pedagogical necessity in order that each and 
every child might have an opportunity to use 
his hands in some form of constructive work. 
In fact, the manufacturers being also taxpayers 
were inclined to oppose manual training because 
it was expensive. The purely educational value 
of this training to the American youth was not 



70 Industry and the School System 

small ; but the old-line manual training work 
did not directly aid business managers in their 
laudable efforts to swell profits and to increase 
dividends. To-day, however, when skilled men 
are an urgent necessity the proposition seems 
very different to the same class of men ; and an 
organized effort is being made by our captains 
of industry to convert the public schools, or 
certain departments of the educational system, 
into schools for apprentices. 

The business interests of the country are 
making two demands upon our school system. 
(1) Both big and little business interests are 
urging the efficient and economical training of 
wage earners in all lines from the highest down 
to the lowest positions in order to insure an 
adequate supply of efficient employees. (2) Cer- 
tain large financial interests are favoring higher 
forms of education for the favored few. The 
kind of higher education preferred is that which 
emphasizes the importance of vested rights, the 
danger of social changes, individualism and the 
value of financial leadership. It is desired that 
stress be laid upon astronomy rather than upon 
sociology, upon physics rather than upon eco- 
nomics, upon research rather than upon action, 
upon the efficacy of benevolence rather than 
upon justice, upon the sacredness of legal forms 
rather than upon the sacredness of humanity. 
Many industrial leaders avowedly emphasize the 
value of higher cultural education as introducing 
a counteracting force to radicalism of various 



Demands of Social Reformers 71 

kinds. Conservative educators place a high 
valuation upon this sort of training, either be- 
cause they live in a world of unreality or 
because they are looking for -increased endow- 
ments. 

9. Demands of Social Reformers,— The so- 
called educational and social reformers, the scien- 
tific students of the world's progress, together with 
the leaders and thinkers among the wage earners, 
are urging the importance of the psychological 
and social ideals of education. These interests 
are not opposing the practical forms of educa- 
tion, but they do strenuously maintain that the 
school shall not be a mere factory to turn out 
plodding, unthinking, narrowly trained wage 
earners, that the school shall not be utilized to 
break down the power of labor organizations, to 
lengthen the hours of daily toil, or to lower the 
standard of living of the American working man. 
These interests stand firmly for the view that the 
school system of to-day exists for the purpose of 
producing thinking, as well as working, men and 
women, for the training of citizens rather than 
for the fashioning of human tools. '^ In order to 
bring about an industrial democracy,'' writes 
Prof. William IMoyes, ^^men must be trained not 
only in democracy but in industry." This sen- 
tence well expresses the twofold function of the 
public school system in a modern democracy, — 
training in citizenship and in workmanship. 
The school should not train machine-men, but 
men for citizenship in an industrial society. 



72 Industry and the School System 

10. The Parting of the Educational Road.— 
The American public school system, extending 
from the kindergarten to the graduate school of 
the university, is in a process of rapid modifica- 
tion in regard to educational aims, ideals, meth- 
ods, and values. The United States to-day 
stands hesitatingly, torn by conflicting emotions 
and impulses, at the forks in the educational 
road. The important zone of conflict lies be- 
tween the practical and the social criteria. 
Which of two powerful forces, emanating from 
business and social interests, is to control in the 
council chambers of American boards of educa- 
tion? Will the demands of ^ ^ big business •' or 
the demands for good citizenship and for racial 
efficiency dominate I Are our schools to be 
transformed into cheap and efficient instruments 
for training the youth for commercial and indus- 
trial jobs ; or will they become studios for the 
training of efficient workers and intelligent citi- 
zens! Is the school of the future to be a mere 
trade school ; or is it to become an engine for 
improving human beings, for developing men and 
women who will be more than cogs in our great 
industrial mechanism! These are some of the 
insistent questions which our educational workers 
ought to solve in the near future. Fundamen- 
tally, the problem is one of educational ideals and 
values, in other words, of class versus mass in- 
terest, or of occupational versus social welfare. 

The practical ideal calls for a standardized prod- 
uct 5 the social ideal for an individualized prod- 



The Need of a Yardstick 73 

net And the adherents of the former are 
insistent in urging the claims of a '* business ad- 
ministration.'' Now, the chief merit of a busi- 
ness administration in a factory, a store, or a 
school is found in a reduction of the expenses of 
production ; and this result is normally accom- 
plished by standardizing methods, processes, and 
output. Can the American people afford to mould 
boys and girls in our schools as the shop manager 
turns out bolts, hammers, and hoes? Can we 
conserve and develop our human resources with- 
out insisting that our schools send forth an indi- 
vidualized product at a somewhat higher expense 
of production ^ In short, is not the demand for a 
business administration a consequence of taking 
a selfish and short-sighted view of the problem 1 
It seems to involve the sacrifice of the future and 
of the child in the immediate interest of business 
and of the tax-payer. Efficient teaching and effi- 
cient administration are desirable ; but good 
factory management applied to the school system 
does not necessarily spell good school administra- 
tion. The social standard must be thrown over- 
board if the American people insist upon a 
standardized, low-expense-of -production school 
output. Economical management is not, how- 
ever, a misnomer in a studio or in a school. 
Unnecessary waste of materials or of efforts is 
to be deprecated ; but the prime motive should 
be to turn out a good rather than a cheap product. 
II. The Need of a Yardstick. — Before it will 
be possible to obtain a semblance of unanimity 



74 Industry and the School System 

between these conflicting interests in regard to 
educational standards and valueSj some fairly- 
definite standard of judgment for all social and 
political institutions must be utilized. This is a 
prime essential. Is there any yardstick for the 
measurement of social values which will be ac- 
ceptable to many different classes and interests I 
The customary standard of recent decades has 
been social welfare, the good of society considered 
as a unit. But this popular criterion is open to 
the serious indictment of indeterminateness and 
abiguity ; it is too indefinite for practical use. 
Social welfare is interpreted in as many ways as 
there are different classes and interests in the 
community ; and industrial progress has in recent 
decades increased the number of interests, and 
has brought different nationalities into contact 
with each other. If we are to judge accurately 
of the influence of industry upon social progress, 
of the value of any social or political institution, 
or of the importance of any proposed measure of 
reform, some fairly definite, tangible, and funda- 
mental standard must first be established which 
will supersede that of social welfare or of the good 
of the greatest number. If this can be success- 
fully accomplished, all except the most radical 
reformers or the revolutionists on one hand, and 
the most reactionary of the conservatives on the 
other, should be able to meet upon common 
ground, and to work in practical harmony in 
hastening institutional reforms of various kinds. 
Professor Boss has insisted that policies and in- 



School for Workers and Non- Workers 75 

stitutions should be evaluated according to their 
significance in improving the character and 
stamina of the human race or the ^^ breed of 
men." All can fairly well agree upon a defini- 
tion of health, efficiency, and individual and so- 
cial stamina ; but not upon that abstract concept, 
the good of all or social welfare. Few there are 
who will openly question the desirability of any 
institution or of any measure which will aid in 
raising the standard of health, economic efficiency, 
or intellectual acumen. Industrial or vocational 
education, or any other policy from socialism to 
the abolition of child labor in factories, should 
stand or fall by this definite, fundamental, and 
universal test : Does or does it not tend to im- 
prove the health, vigor, and efficiency of the 
race 1 ^ 

12. The School should Exist for Workers 
as Well as Non-V/orkers. — It is clear that in 
a democracy the school should reach workers as 
well as non- workers. Not so to do is to discrimi- 
nate against the poorer and weaker classes in the 
community. Education and industry once went 
hand in hand ; through the introduction of man- 
ual training we are attempting again to unite 
them. But the vital need of the present is edu- 
cation for those who are forced to enter our 
shops, stores, and offices without coming into 
contact with the training which our schools ought 

^Carlton, ** ReDort of the Committee on the Place of In- 
dustries in Public Education, National Education Associa- 
tion,'^ 1910, pp. 13-^14. 



76 Industry and the School System 

to give in science, history (not chronology), and 
literature. The ideal school of the future will not 
close its doors in the face of the worker as the 
whirling wheels of the factory stop, the click of 
the typewriter ceases, and the constant hum of the 
cash carrier dies away. No educational system 
which does not aim to reach young workers as 
well as those who are not obliged early to earn 
their daily bread, is worthy of high rank in the 
present era. The public schools have not ade- 
quately provided for the educational needs of the 
young workers ; this has been largely left to pri- 
vate correspondence schools and the Y, M. C. A. 
night schools. In preceding centuries the bur- 
den-bearers of the race were considered to be 
unworthy of an education. Because of social 
inertia and class demarkations, our ideas in re- 
gard to the proper scope of a public school sys- 
tem are still influenced and colored by the old 
prejudices against the wage earner. The high 
school, the continuation school, the college, and 
the university ought to stand ready to help any 
one in the community in any important line of 
study or of investigation. The school system 
should be for ^^any one, anywhere, any time." 
The school of the future should be an all-year, 
six-day week school. The school day should be 
lengthened. The school of the future should be 
a day school, a night school, and a continua- 
tion school. It should be a workshop, a gym- 
nasium, and a social centre as well as a place for 
study. 



Summary 77 



Summary 

Education is a method of passing the experi- 
ence of precediDg generations to the youth of the 
nation. 

But it should be more than a mere passive 
agent; education should be a directive force 
working for social uplift. 

With changing industrial conditions, the scope, 
ideals and methods of the educational system are 
modified. 

But educational standards are conflicting. 

The demands of business men and of social re- 
formers do not coincide. 

The American people must soon decide which 
standard shall be adopted by the public school 
system. 

Certainly, the school system in a democratic 
nation should aid in improving the character and 
stamina of the race ; and it should reach workers 
as well as non- workers. 



Suggestive Questions 

Is the Church effectively using its powerful in- 
fluence against the adoption of the narrow or 
practical standard of education for the great mass 
of children ! 

Are the schools in your community used as 
social centres f 

Are your schools provided with equipment for 
physical training f 

What are the sanitary conditions in your 
schools 1 

How large a percentage of children in your 
community drop out of school before entering 
high school t Before graduating from high 
school ! Why do so many drop outf 



V 

WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN INDUSTRY 

WOMAN and Child Labor is an 
Old Phenomenon. — The primitive 
woman was the first industrial worker. 
Throughout all historical epochs women have 
borne their full share of the burden of producing 
and preparing food, clothing, and shelter, — the 
elemental necessities of mankind. But this work 
has in the past been performed in close connec- 
tion with the home ; it has indeed been an inte- 
gral part of the duties of home life. Child la- 
bor is also not a new phenomenon accompany- 
ing and growing out of the factory system. And 
neither woman nor child labor is in essence evil. 
Each and every boy and girl of ten to sixteen 
years of age ought to do some productive work, 
regularly and systematically. Productive activ- 
ity is an essential part of the educative process. 
The dangers in connection with both the woman 
and the child labor of to-day are connected with 
the conditions of work — routine, long working 
day, insanitary surroundings, etc. — found in our 
factories, stores, offices, and sweat shops. 

2. Statistics of 'Woman and Child Labor. 
—Until recent decades practically 'all child and 
woman workers were not wage earners. The 

73 



Statistics of Woman and Child Labor 79 

transfer to gainful or breadwinning occupations 
has been going on since the beginning of the 
nineteenth century. The increase of child (under 
sixteen years of age) labor is being checked by 
legislation ; but the woman breadwinner has se- 
cured a permanent foothold in industry. In 
1900, about one in every five women, sixteen 
years of age or over, was a wage earner. The 
amount of unpaid work done by women in the 
home must, of course, still be very considerable. 
In 1909, a total of 6,615,046 wage earners were 
employed in the manufacturing plants of the na- 
tion. Of this number, 1,290,389, or 19.5 per 
cent., were females sixteen years of age and over, 
and 161,493, or 2.5 per cent, were children under 
sixteen years of age. The total number of female 
wage earners was larger in 1909 than in 1904 or 
1899, but the percentage of the total number Yvas 
the same in each of the three years for which 
Census statistics are available. The percentage 
of child workers in manufacture has declined 
slightly,— 3.4 per cent, in 1899, 2.9 per cent, in 
1904, and 2.5 per cent, in 1909. In the mining 
industries of the country, 8,151 boys under six- 
teen years of age, or 0.8 per cent, of the total 
number of wage earners in the industry, were 
employed in 1909. In 1900, 1,750,178 wage 
workers, ten to fifteen years of age, were re- 
ported in all industries. Of this number, 1,264,- 
411 were boys and 485,767 were girls. In 1880, 
there were reported 7,462 saleswomen, or 23.1 
per cent, of all store employees. In 1900, the 



8o Women and Children in Industry 

percentage was practically the samcj— 23.3 per 
cent. ; but the total number had increased to 
142,265. In manufacture, the largest percentage 
of child workers, 10.4, is found in the cotton 
goods industry. In hosiery and knit goods, the 
percentage is 8.1 ; and in the silk and silk goods 
industry, 8.0. The artificial flower industry has 
the highest percentage of adult women workers, 
83.7. The percentage among the confectionery 
workers is 58.1. The silk industry stands high in 
the list with 57.1 per cent. 

3. Legislation. — In the United States, the 
regulation of working conditions in factories, 
stores, offices, etc., is a state, not a national, 
function. Therefore, there is as yet little uni- 
formity in such legislation. Each State has its 
own peculiar legislation which is different from 
that of any other State. At present such organi- 
zations as the American Association for Labor 
Legislation and the National Child Labor Com- 
mittee are using their influence to bring about 
greater uniformity. Among the subjects ordi- 
narily dealt with in matters of labor legislation 
are the regulation of the length of the working 
day, the prohibition of night work, provisions 
relating to safety and to sanitary conditions, the 
time of payment of wages, and special regulations 
in regard to hazardous occupations. Broadly 
speaking, European countries have adopted better 
labor laws than the great majority of the States 
of the United States. More accurate information 
is needed in regard to the conditions under which 



Legislation 8l 

men, women, and children work, and a wide 
dissemination of such information is highly de- 
sirable. 

All American States now have on their statute 
books some provision in regard to child labor. 
But unfortunately up to the present time (1913), 
no State protects all of its child workers. In the 
majority of the Northern and Eastern States, the 
employment of children under fourteen years of 
age in factories, stores, workshops, or mines, is 
prohibited. In employments considered danger- 
ous to health or morals, the age limit is raised. 
In the street trades and in agricultural pursuits, 
the limit is usually lower or no limitation is pro- 
vided. As a rule, children between the ages of 
fourteen and sixteen are allowed to work pro- 
vided they are granted working papers. Work- 
ing papers may be granted if the child has com- 
pleted a certain amount of school work, if the 
earnings of the child are needed by the family, 
and if the child is in good physical condition. 
Night work is prohibited in a considerable 
number of States. The exact provisions of the 
law are, of course, different in different States. 
In the South, the laws are less stringent than in 
the North. 

An increasing number of States are passing 
legislation relating to the work of adult women. 
Michigan limits the working time for women and 
children in factories, laundries, and stores to 
nine hours per day and fifty-four hours per week. 
At least two States, California and Washington, 



82 Women and Children in Industry 

have established an eight-hour day for women 
and children. Several States have provided that 
ten hours shall constitute the legal working day 
for female employees. Night work by adult 
women is prohibited in Massachusetts, South 
Carolina, Nebraska and Indiana. Many States 
have passed laws prohibiting the emploj^ment 
of women in certain occupations. Many health 
regulations relating to working women are found 
on the statute books of the various common- 
wealths. Massachusetts and seven other States 
provide for the establishment of minimum wage 
boards in certain industries. And a Utah statute 
fixes a minimum wage for different classes of 
women and child workers. 

The enforcement of labor legislation is usually 
placed in the hands of a labor commissioner or 
commission. Under the commissioner or com- 
mission is employed a corps, usually inade- 
quate, of factory inspectors. A few States still 
make practically no provision for enforcing labor 
laws. The efficient administration and enforce- 
ment of labor legislation is to-day of greater 
practical importance than the passage of more 
legislation. The difficulties in connection with 
the enforcement of labor laws are many. The 
laws are often hastily and improperly drafted ; 
both employer and employee are frequently will- 
ing and anxious to evade the law ; the general 
public too often manifests little interest in the 
matter; reform organizations often erroneously 
conceive that their work is ended when desired 



Legal Status of Legislation 83 

legislation is finally placed upon the statute 
books ; the corps of inspectors is often insuffi- 
cient, inefficient, and poorly paid ; and court 
decisions may hamper the enforcement of the law 
or nullify it. 

4. Legal Status of Legislation. — Each and 
every piece of labor legislation is forced in this 
country to run the gauntlet of both the state and 
the federal courts and constitutions. It may be 
declared unconstitutional, and therefore null and 
void, because it conflicts with some provision of 
either state or federal constitution. The right 
of a State to regulate child labor is no longer 
questioned. The child is a ward of the State, 
and as such is unable to make legally binding 
contracts. The police power of the State can be ex- 
tended to protect the child workers of the nation. 

In regard to adult women workers, the legal 
situation is not quite as clear ; but the tendency 
of the courts undoubtedly is towards a recogni- 
tion of the right of the lawmaking bodies to 
regulate the conditions under which women may 
work for wages. The United States Supreme 
Court has declared an Oregon law limiting the 
hours of women workers in laundries to ten hours 
per day to be constitutional. State Supreme 
Courts have handed down similar decisions. In 
the Oregon laundry case before the United 
States Supreme Court and in the Eitchie case be- 
fore the Illinois Supreme Court, decisions favor- 
able to laws limiting the working day were! 
handed down because a long working day was.i 



84 Women and Children in Industry 

held to be detrimental to the health of women 
andj therefore, a menace to the future children 
of working women. Because of the detrimental 
effect of a long working day for women, upon 
the stamina of the race, the courts held that a 
law limiting the hours of labor of women con- 
stituted a legitimate exercise of the police power. 
Other laws relating to the conditions under 
which women work must stand practically the 
same test. 

In the case of adult males, the provisions of 
the federal constitution and of many of the state 
constitutions, render null and void legislation in 
regard to hours of labor, night work, and the 
like, unless it can be clearly and unmistakably 
shown to the satisfaction of the courts that the 
occupation is distinctly dangerous or unhealth- 
ful. A law limiting the hours of labor in mines 
was declared constitutional by the United States 
Supreme Court ; but one limiting the hours in 
bakeries was declared unconstitutional by the 
same tribunal. Laws in regard to safety devices, 
fire escapes, and the like are constitutional even 
though applying only to adult males. Outside 
of public employment, shorter hours of labor 
for adult male wage earners must apparently 
come through trade union action. However, the 
Supreme Court of Mississippi has recently up- 
held a ten hour law applying to all adults era- 
ployed in manufacture. 

5. Childhood is a Preparatory Period.— 
The tendency towards the enactment of mor© and 



Fundamental Child Labor Problem 85 

more stringent child labor laws indicates that 
in the near future labor in practically ail gain- 
ful occupations will be illegal when performed 
by children under fifteen years of age. At least 
it is not visionary to anticipate that such legisla- 
tion will be passed in all E"orthern States within 
a few years. Childhood should be a period of 
preparation for usefulness when adult life is 
reached. While children should be required to 
participate in productive activity, the prime pur- 
pose of such activity should be developmental ; 
the pecuniary reward received, if any, should be 
a secondary consideration. The shop and the 
factory are organized for profit and the produc- 
tion of goods. They are not prepared to perform 
the function of educating boys and girls in an 
efficient manner. The work of giving the 
American youth contact with productive in- 
dustry must hereafter devolve in a large measure 
upon the public school system. It is an im- 
portant part of the work of the schools. Both 
the vocational training and the vocational guid- 
ance of the youth must be assumed by our edu- 
cational authorities. The problem cannot be 
solved by our shops and factories ; and it is too 
big to be handled by the individual parent. It 
is a communal task. And the leaders of public 
opinion ought to emphasize this important fact. 

6. The Fundamental Child Labor Prob- 
lem. — The children who are forced out of school 
and into industry at an early age are over- 
worked, under-educated, and improperly pre- 



86 Women and Children in Industry 

pared to enter a skilled occupation. On the 
other hand, the child that stays in school until 
the end of the tenth or twelfth grade is too often 
out of touch with the practical affairs of life. 
And too frequently he has too much unoccupied 
time. When vacations and absences are consid- 
ered, ^4t appears that on an average the school 
keeps children busy about one-third of the time 
when they are awake.'' Some of the children 
are spending their out-of-school hours in hard 
work in stores, in the street trades, as deliv- 
ery boys, and in other blind-alley occupations. 
Others are idling away their time on the street 
and in questionable places of amusement. The 
great child problem of to-day is that of obtaining 
a mean between overwork and no-work. The 
basal problem is to dovetail intellectual training, 
play, and vocational training. Modern industry 
by depriving the home of many forms of honie 
work and by destroying the home playground 
has introduced new and grave difficulties into 
the boy and girl problem. The child worker is 
in no more danger than is the child standing 
around '^ waiting for something to turn up.'' 

Both the boy and the girl need training in 
regular constructive work ; both need opportu- 
nity for healthful play in a wholesome environ- 
ment. But overwork and under-play constitute 
a menace. The school system must face this 
problem. .The solution involves, as was advo- 
cated in the preceding chapter, an all-year school 
year, a six-day week, a longer school day, voca- 



Child Labor is an Economic Mistake 87 

tional training, supervised play, and perhaps a 
half-time school for young workers. It does not 
necessarily mean more purely intellectual drill, 
and it may mean less. The advocate of legisla- 
tion prohibiting child labor who believes that the 
passage and enforcement of such statutes solves 
the problem, is a very superficial student of so- 
ciety. 

7. Child Labor is an Economic Mistake. — 
The stinging indictment which the anti-child 
labor agitators are now reading against child 
labor is that it is an economic mistake. The 
element of pity, the sentiment of humanitarian- 
ism, is no longer placed conspicuously in the fore- 
ground. It is being urged that child labor does 
not pay. Child labor is held to be an expensive 
and inefficient form of labor for the employer to 
hire. And from a national view-point, child 
labor is a menace because it tends to cripple the 
next generation of adult workers and to lower 
their stamina and efficiency. The utilization of 
the child in mill and mine is like ^^ grinding the 
seed corn." This kind of argument, repeatedly 
driven home by representatives of various child 
welfare organizations, and supplementing the old 
sentimental arguments, is giving a powerful im- 
petus to the passage and enforcement of laws 
restricting gainful child labor. The agitation 
against gainful child labor is now an integral 
part of the important and encouraging move- 
ment for the conservation of the human resources 
of the nation. 



88 Women and Children in Industry 

It is also an educational fallacy to build fine, 
well-equipped buildings and maintain a Avell- 
trained corps of teachers, and then to allow the 
young child to go early into industry. If modern 
industry provides excellent training for youthful 
workers, then let less money be expended for 
schools and teachers ; but, if it does not, the 
American people should firmly demand that all 
children have an actual opportunity to get the 
benefit of the educational facilities offered by an 
improved public school system. 

8. Woman's Work. — Any scientific consid- 
eration of the tendencies in connection with the 
home, home life, and the work of women is quite 
certain to cut across many traditional ideas and 
ingrained, inherited prejudices. Consequently, 
a discussion of woman's work is likely to provoke 
harsh criticism. The reader is asked to consider 
the following pages as calmly and dispassionately 
as possible. 

The American woman, married or unmarried, 
is finding many new interests outside the four 
walls of the house in which she lives and outside 
the confines of the immediate neighborhood. 
And even a cursory glance at the progress of in- 
dustrial evolution proves almost conclusively that 
this phenomenon is likely to be more rather than 
less noticeable in the future. Man's work has 
undergone great transformations as the result of 
the development of modern industry, and woman's 
work is now passing through a similar transfor- 
mation* Although public opinion by fostering 



Woman's Work 89 

a sentiment opposed to the earning of wages by 
women, particularly after marriage, may retard 
the movement of industry outside the family res- 
idence, a careful study of recent industrial his- 
tory points to the conclusion that household in- 
dustry is doomed to undergo important transfor- 
mations within a few decades. 

It is, of course, not impossible that other po- 
tent forces and influences may counteract the 
tendencies which are disclosed by a study of in- 
dustrial history ; but the burden of proof lies 
upon the shoulders of those who assert that they 
can clearly discern such forces and influences. 
In all other lines of productive activity, sooner 
or later the method or policy which runs counter 
to the forces making for efficiency, and for the 
reduction of unnecessary expenditures of human 
energy, gives way to a new method or policy. 
Household industry may never become large- 
scale, but it has passed through great transforma- 
tions in recent years, and is destined to undergo 
further modifications. 

A fact also capable of demonstration is that not 
only are many forms of work formerly done within 
the home now performed outside the home, but 
that many kinds of work now often performed 
within the home may be more efficiently done 
outside or by specialists coming into the house at 
stated intervals. As long as household industry 
remains small-scale and non-specialized, the work 
performed may be expected to lack scientific pre- 
cision and a high degree of efficiency will not be 



go Women and Children in Industry 

attained. Unless women follow their work out- 
side the home, they must perforce become idlers 
or perform work inside the home at a great dis- 
advantage from the standpoint of economic effi- 
ciency. 

The progress of industry out of the home has 
been retarded partly because the woman in the 
home has not been a wage earner. Her time was 
not considered to be of economic importance. 
In reckoning the cost of articles made at home 
for the use of the family, no allowance is usually 
made for a time or piece wage for the women of 
the household. As a consequence, clothes made 
at home in an inefficient manner by small-scale 
methods have often competed successfully with 
those made outside according to efficient and up- 
to-date factory methods. 

Q. The Solution.— Like those connected with 
child labor, the problems connected with adult 
female labor are social. But these problems are 
not to be solved, like those connected with child 
workers, by withdrawing the women workers 
from the busy industrial world. They are not to 
be solved by making the wage-earning woman a 
non-wage earner. The solution lies in the im- 
provement of working conditions, — shortening 
the working day, reducing the danger to health, 
life, and morals. In short, the problem is that 
of humanizing industry. The Church can do 
much to aid various organizations which are en- 
deavoring to improve working conditions, and 
it can also perform efficient service in crystalliz- 



Summary 91 

ing public sentiment in favor of the enactment 
and enforcement of better labor laws. 

The working woman is the normal woman. 
Living in ^^ decorative idleness '' is as abnormal 
for the woman as it is for the man. Idleness, the 
performance of useless work, or working under 
conditions which make for low efficiency, as many 
housewives must, is as undesirable in the case of 
women as in the case of men. Useful and efficient 
productive activity is the birthright of each and 
every individual. The individual or group de- 
nied this right is on the toboggan which leads 
towards weakness and degeneracy. Parasitism 
in the case of women as well as in the case of men 
is a racial menace. Working women rather 
than idle women have normal instincts. Olive 
Schreiner has well stated the demand of normal, 
far-seeing women of to-day. '' We demand that 
in this new strange world which is arising alike 
upon men and women, where nothing is as it was, 
and all things are assuming new shapes and rela- 
tions, we demand that in this new world we also 
shall have our share of honored and socially 
useful human toil, our half of the labor of the 
children of woman. '^ Both economic considera- 
tions and the necessities of racial advance de- 
mand that woman continue, but under new and 
better conditions, to be an industrial worker. 

Summary 
Women and children have for ages been in- 
dustrial workers ; but modern industry has trans- 
formed working conditions. 



92 Women and Children in Industry 

American States are rapidly placing new legis- 
lation on their statute books relating to hours, 
night work, and other conditions of labor. 

Childhood should be a period of preparation 
and of activity. Intellectual training, vocational 
training, and play are essentials in the develop- 
ment of each and every child. 

From a social view-point, child labor is waste- 
ful. 

Woman's work is now undergoing great trans- 
formations. 

The normal woman is not an idler. 

Suggestive Questions 

Is your church actively working for better 
labor laws ? 

Are the labor laws now on the statute books 
enforced in your community 1 

How many women and children are wage earn- 
ers in your community ? 

What are the effects of child labor in industry 
upon adult workers? 



VI 

WAGES AND HOURS 

ACCURATE Wage Statistics are Diffi- 
cult to Obtain, — All statistics of wages 
covering a given occupation or a State 
must of necessity be considered to be only ap- 
proximately accurate. The United States Bureau 
of Labor and the Bureaus of Labor of Massa- 
chusetts, New Jersey, and perhaps a few other 
States give some fairly accurate wage statistics. 
The Census Bureau also presents some wage sta- 
tistics which are fairly reliable. But nearly all 
other statistics covering an entire industry or an 
entire State must be used with caution. 

2. Statistics. — Using the best statistics avail- 
able, Dr. Scott Nearing has estimated the wages 
of adult workers at the opening of the second 
decade of the century for the great industrial 
region north of Mason and Dixon's line and, 
east of the Eocky Mountains. A deduction of 
twenty per cent, from the total working time is 
made for unemployment. The first table pre- 
sents the estimates for adult males ; the second 
for adult females. 

Table I 

^ of the total number receive less than $326 per year 
JL <* << <* ^^ *' << goo ^^ 

93 



94 Wages and Hours 

Table II 

J of the total number receive less than $200 per year 

I U M .; u u .. 325 U 

H U *« ii i4 U *, gQQ 

According to the Bureau of the Census, making 
no allowance for unemployment, of the adult 
males employed in the manufacturing industries 
of the United States, in 1905, 25 per cent, received 
less than S8 per week or $416 per year, and 50 
per cent, received less than $10.25 per week or 
$533 per year. According to the Census of 1910, 
the average wage paid factory wage earners — 
men, women, and children — was $518 per year. 
The Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission 
in 1911 found that 41 per cent, of the adult women 
candy workers and 22 per cent, of the adult 
women cotton workers in that State earned less 
than $5.00 per week. As the result of a munici- 
pal investigation made in Kansas City in 1911 by 
an official committee, it was estimated that one- 
half of the wage-earning girls in that city earned 
$6. 00 or less per week. And the investigating com- 
mittee held that $9. 00 per week was a living wage. 

In 1908, a committee appointed by the I^s'ew 
York State Conference of Charities and Correc- 
tions, after a painstaking study of the cost of 
living in New York City estimated that $825 is 
sufficient for the average family of five individu- 
als, comprising the father, mother, and three 
children under fourteen years of age, to maintain 
a fairly proper standard of living in the Borough 
of Manhattan. In other parts of Kew York City 



Statistics 95 

and in smaller cities the amount might be slightly 
reduced. This means that the income of the 
heads of families must in a large percentage of 
cases be supplemented by the earnings of wife or 
children or by taking boarders and renting rooms, 
or the family income will fall below the amount 
deemed necessary for a decent standard of living. 
The cost of food forms a large item in the total ex- 
penditure of the low-income family. In seventy- 
two New York families investigated having a fam- 
ily income of $600 to $700 per year, 44.6 per cent, 
of the total income was spent for food. In recent 
years the price of foodstuffs has been rising 
rapidly and the wage earners have '^felt the 
pinch.'' According to careful estimates made 
by the United States Bureau of Labor, covering 
the period, 1890 to 1913, the relative retail prices 
^^ weighted according to the average consumption 
of the various articles of food in working men^s 
families,'' were in the ratio of 95.2 in 1896, the 
year of lowest prices, to 154.2 in 1912,— an in- 
crease of more than sixty per cent. 

An imposing array of fairly accurate figures 
might easily be presented. These statistics could 
be gathered from different parts of the nation 
and from different industries for the purpose of 
proving that the wages of both men and women 
are very low. But it seems unwise to multiply 
statistics in this section. The wages of women 
are considerably lower than thOse of men ; and 
the wage received by a large percentage of work- 
ers, particularly women workers, is less than an 



96 Wages and Hours 

adequate living wage. A variety of reasons may 
be assigned for the low wages paid women rela= 
tive to those received by men. One of the funda- 
mental reasons is found in the fact that few young 
girls expect to remain long as wage earners; 
and, as a consequence, they too frequently enter 
blind-alley occupations. The typical female wage 
earner changes frequently from one position to 
another, is unskilled, under-paid, and often over- 
worked. A study of factory girls in New York 
City led to the conclusion that only approxi- 
mately one-half of the positions obtained are held 
for more than six months. As long as woman's 
work outside the home is considered to be a make- 
shift, it may be expected that women workers 
will be unskilled and poorly paid.^ 

3. The Menace of Low Wages. — Equality 
of opportunity is an essential part of the Ameri- 
can concept of justice between individuals. But 
can equality of opportunity obtain while many 
receive wages which are below a living wage I 
There is in the United States and elsewhere, a 
fairly well marked division of classes or groups 
of people according to income received. Pro- 
fessor Seager divides American families into five 
classes. In the first class, the income is $3,000 
or more per year. The second group may be 
called the great middle class. The children in 
the families of these two groups have excellent 
care and training. The third class includes the 
iskilled workers. The standard of living of this 

^ Bere^ the lm% two seotions of tbe precedicg chapter. 



The Menace of Low Wages 97 

class is somewhat lower than that of the middle 
class. Its members marry earlier in life, have 
larger families, and their children begin to earn 
their living at an earlier age than is the case in 
the middle class. The nnskilled workers belong 
to the fonrth group. ^' Their hours are long and 
their labor exhausting, and in consequence their 
lives afford little opportunity for attention to 
other than the merely physical wants. Early 
marriages are facilitated by the fact that the full 
earning power of men of this class is attained at 
nineteen or twenty, and that their standard of 
living opposes no barrier so long as work is 
steady and wages are certain. Children come in 
this class before the parents have themselves 
reached maturity, and their number, and the 
rude way in which the family is compelled to 
live, prevent the mother from giving them the 
attention that their interests demand. As these 
children approach the age when they can go to 
school they are allowed to spend more and more 
time on the streets and to acquire knowledge so 
destructive of the idealism natural to children. 
In school their progress is retarded by the lack 
of that stimulus and encouragement on the side 
of parents which is so helpful to children reared 
in more fortunate circumstances, and just as they 
are getting old enough to form judgments for 
themselves their help is needed at home, or jobs 
are secured for them, and the formal part of 
their education is brought to an abrupt close.'' ^ 
^Seager, ** Introduction to Economics,'^ p, 239. 



gS Wages and Hours 

In the fifth class is found the '^ submerged tenth. '^ 
These groups are more or less distinct and non- 
competing. Individuals may rise above or fall 
below the group into which they were born ; but 
the great mass find their work and status in life 
determined by their parentage and early environ- 
ment and training. This is contrary to an opin- 
ion quite generally accepted by complacent 
Americans 5 but it is a fairly accurate statement 
of the situation at the present time. 

Recently, the matter of low wages, particularly 
when paid to women, has attracted much atten- 
tion. Many have asserted that prostitution and 
the white slave traffic were the direct results of 
low wages paid to young women. Others have 
vigorously opposed this dictum. It is probably 
true that a low wage is not, in a large percentage 
of cases, the direct cause of moral degradation ; 
but, as has been indicated above, the wage rate 
does in no small measure determine the approxi- 
mate location of the home or the boarding place 
in the town or city, the environmental influences 
surrounding it, the opportunities for recreation 
and amusement, the amount of schooling received, 
and the nature of other potent factors in forming 
the character of the young. Many young girls, 
and young men also, are forced, or at least go, 
into industry at an early age while their char- 
acters and their bodies are still in the process of 
formation and growth, while they are still plastic 
and impressionable, at a time when they ought 
to be in school or on the playground. As long 



Real and Money Wages 99 

as these conditions, coupled with low wages, a 
long working day, nervous strain, and the lack 
of opportunity for wholesome amusement, exist, 
a potent and constant force is exerted to produce 
unsocial and degrading conduct. And, on the 
whole, the temptations which come to the poorly 
paid girl are stronger, more compelling, and 
more recurrent than those which assail one re- 
ceiving a larger income. A popular writer has 
written wisely, ^^The girl who wants food and 
a decent^room and warm clothing and a touch of 
finery, who wants to feel that she is living, is in 
no fit condition to resist temptations which offer 
her all these things, and more. ' ' And Michigan's 
efficient woman factory inspector. Miss Burton, 
writes : ^^ Pretty clothes and a few of the luxu- 
ries are as much a necessity to the normal girl as 
food and sunshine and shelter.'^ 

Surely in these days of marvellous productivity, 
of increasing wealth, and of gigantic undertak- 
ings, the person possessed of an inquiring spirit 
may ask whether poverty must necessarily ac- 
company progress ? Is not the subsistence wage 
a survival of the days of the pre-machinery and 
pre-steam-engine age I And is it not time that 
we individually and as members of various 
organizations, societies, and churches, not only 
inquire, but earnestly tackle the job of eliminat- 
ing extreme poverty in a land of plenty ? 

4. Real and Money Wages. — Wages may 
be divided into two classes — money and real 
wages. Money wages is, as the name indicates, 



loo Wages and Hours 

the wage received measured in terms of dollars 
and cents. The real wage of the worker is the 
wage received when computed in necessities, 
comforts, and savings which the wage earner is 
able to obtain as the result of his daily toil. If 
the level of prices for the bulk of commodities 
rises, the real wage will fall provided no rise 
occurs in the money wage. Conversely, if the 
level of prices falls, real wages will rise. From 
the standpoint of the wage earner, the crucial 
test of the adequacy or inadequacy of a wage rate 
can only be ascertained by considering real rather 
than money wages. As prices have been rising 
for the last decade and a half, the tendency has 
been to force a reduction of the real wages of the 
workers ; this tendency has been counteracted in 
some measure by the rise in money wages. 

A broader and more accurate definition of real 
wages will include in that term not only the in- 
come of comforts and necessities derived from 
the money wage but also the services rendered 
by the community, — free education, parks, free 
disposal of garbage, provision for water, gas, and 
transportation at reduced rates, and a variety of 
other services. An increase in the services ren- 
dered by the community is equivalent to an in- 
crease in real wages, unless the increased ex- 
penditure is made possible by a tax which 
directly or indirectly falls upon money wages. 

5. Wages and Taxation, — This enlarged 
concept of real wages leads directly to the con- 
jsideration of the vexatious and important prob- 



Hours loi 

lems connected with the taxation and regulation 
of monopolies. Trade unionists, social reformers, 
and students of economics have not laid sufficient 
emphasis upon taxation as a method of reducing 
the burdens placed upon industry and as a means 
of improving the condition of the wage earners 
of the nation. The flow of national income- 
material goods and services— is divided into 
wages, interest, depreciation, rent, profits, mon- 
opoly gains, chance gains, and the like. Land 
rent cannot be legislated out of existence ; and 
wages cannot be directly raised by legislation or 
by trade union action so as to reduce greatly or 
to eliminate monopoly gains. Eents may, how- 
ever, be partially, if not wholly, diverted into 
the public treasury. Through the taxation of 
land values and franchises, and through govern- 
mental ownership and operation of public utilities 
and other monopolies, the governmental income 
may be considerably increased. As a conse- 
quence, the taxation of capital and of competitive 
businesses could be reduced. And the services 
furnished to the community by the municipality 
and the State may be increased, and the charges 
for such services may be eliminated or reduced. 

6. Hours. — The introduction of machinery 
pushed the question of the length of the working 
day into the foreground. In the preceding eras 
when the work of the world was performed with 
crude hand tools and unaided human energy, 
only the bare necessities of life could be obtained 
by working diligently from sun to sun. Ma- 



i^^i 



102 Wages and Hours 

chinery and steam made possible the emajici- 
pation of the human worker from the dreamy 
round of incessant toil. Leisure now becomes 
possible for each and for all ; and democracy be- 
comes more than an iridescent dream. But the 
reduction of the working day has not followed 
automatically the introduction of labor-^ving 
devices. And in many industries in which a 
reduction has taken place, it has availed the 
wage earner very little because the overstrain 
and speeding-up have increased as the hours 
have been reduced. The pressure of organized 
labor and the force of legal enactments have, as 
a rule, been the potent means by which the wage 
earners have gained the shorter working day. 
The demand for a shorter working day is one of 
the oldest and most frequently reiterated of the 
demands of organized labor; and in standing 
for the short day organized labor has exhibited 
a keen insight in regard to the fundamental 
forces making for industrial betterment. Social 
justice can never be approximated as long as 
long hours and overstrain continue. The words 
of Professor Patten are to the point. ^^Ten 
hours of sedentary routine in crowded rooms, or 
of hard manual work that offers no perspectives 
to the mind, stupefy the laborer and drain the 
force that ought to be stored for to-morrow. 
Whoever has seen such a toiler after he has 
slipped from the harness, saturated with fatigue, 
dozing heavily in a chair or urging his faculties 
more actively by recourse to the excitements of 



Hours 103 

the streets, knows that no profits can overcome 
the losses of the long day.'' ^ The worker should 
gain not only a shorter working day but also the 
elimination of overstrain and relentless speed- 
ing-up. 

The average working day is somewhat shorter 
than it was a century ago. In certain hazardous 
occupations like that of mining, and in some 
occupations in which the trade unions are strong, 
such as the building and the printing trades, 
an eight-hour day is customary. But in many 
others, the long working day is still the rule. 
In 1910, an investigation showed that over one- 
fifth of the employees in the iron and steel 
industry worked eighty-four or more hours per 
week, — at least twelve hours per day for seven 
days each week. In the blast furnace depart- 
ment, eighty-eight per cent, of the total worked 
regularly seven days per week. In the blast 
furnace department of the iron and steel industry 
continuous operation is a practical necessity. 
But humanity and racial preservation demand 
three shifts of eight hours each. In 1910, the 
women ticket agents of the Chicago elevated 
railways were regularly working twelve hours 
per day and seven days per week. In the candy 
industry in Chicago, 1908-1909, women were re- 
ported as working during the rush season as 
many as ninety hours in a week. An investiga- 
tion recently made of Michigan's canneries dis- 
closed the following exceptional case of a woman 
* Patten, ^* New Basis of Civilization/^ pp. 190-191, 



104 Wages and Hours 

worker. A forewoman in one of the factories 
worked the following nnmber of hours per week 
in six, not consecutive, weeks, — 84, 102, 90, 91 J, 
100, 115. The last four weeks indicated were 
consecutive. In California canneries, weeks of 
96i, 90, and 83 hours are reported ; in the Balti- 
more canneries, weeks of 93, 91J, and 81 hours 
are reported. The twelve-hour day and the 
seven-day week are both unnecessary and brutal- 
izing. 

7. The Economy of the Short Working 
Day. — Over a century ago in England, attempts 
to limit the hours of labor were met with the 
cry that such legislation would ruin England's 
manufacture. It was asserted that the manufac- 
turer's profits were derived from the output of 
the last hour or hours of the day. If the length 
of the working day were reduced, the profits of 
the manufacturer would be eliminated and the 
industry would be destroyed. In spite of these 
doleful and often-repeated prophecies, the reduc- 
tion in the working day was not followed by the 
promised industrial disaster. And yet in the 
light of a century of experience with the reduc- 
tion of the working day, the old cry that industry 
will be ruined by eight-hour legislation is still 
retarding progress. In fact, reducing the hours 
of labor from twelve and fourteen to eight and 
nine per day has not diminished the total volume 
of production. The shorter working day leads to 
greater rapidity of movement on the part of the 
worker, it increases his efficiency, and it has 



Economy of the Short Working Day 105 

caused machinery to be introduced more rapidly. 
Only a few definite statistics tending to prove the 
economy of the short working day are available. 
' Certain laboratory experiments show that the 
second or third hour of work in the morning 
marks the period of maximum productivity. 
After that period the output per hour decreases 
until the noon period of rest. The output for the 
first hour after noon is higher than that of the last 
hour before noon. But the decline of produc- 
tivity after the noon hour is quite rapid. The 
last hours of the long day are periods of in- 
efficiency. And too great exhaustion militates 
against to-morrow. Quite careful experiments 
made in 1900 by the Zeiss optical factory located 
at Jena, in 1893-1894 by the Salford Iron Works 
of Manchester, England, in 1893 by the Engis 
Chemical Works near Liege, Belgium, and in 
1892 by the Solvay Process Company of Syracuse, 
New York, led in each case to the permanent 
adoption of the eight-hour day.^ 

The eight-hour day was introduced into the 
bituminous coal industry in the fall of 1897. 
Before that date ten hours had been the length 
of the working day. In 1895 and 1896, under 
the ten-hour system the average output per day 
per worker for the ' ' country at large ' ' was 2. 9 and 
2.72 tons respectively. In 1898, 1899, and 1900, 
the first three years under the eight-hour system, 

^Goldmark, *' Fatigue and Efficiency,'^ pp. 133-167; 
Carlton, ^* History and Problems of Organized Labor/' 
pp. 140-141. 



lo6 Wages and Hours 

the average output ranged from 2.98 to 3.09 tons*^ 
And the result seems to be due to increased effi- 
ciency on the part of the worker rather than to 
an increased use of machinery. 

SUIVIMABY 

Statistics prove that the typical American 
wage earner receives a low wage. 

Low wages produce inequality of opportunity. 

Can poverty be eliminated ? 

The usual definition of real wages is inadequate. 
The taxing power can be used to raise real wages. 

Machinery makes possible the reduction of 
the working day. The average working day is 
shorter to-day than in earlier decades. 

The short working day does not necessarily 
mean reduced output. 

Suggestive Questions 

What rates of wages are paid men, women and 
children in your community ? 

Are any wagQ earners in your community 
receiving less than a '^ living wage'' ? 

Do the stores in your town close early ? 

What can be done to insure every worker a 
living wage ? 

1 Goldmark, ** Fatigue and Efficiency," p. 170. 



VII 
EMPLOYMENT 

NUMBER of Persons Engaged in 
Different Occupations.— In 1900, 
29,074,117 persons were reported as 
gainfully employed in the United States. These 
were in five large classes: — 10,381,765 in agri- 
cultural pursuits, 1,258,739 in professional serv- 
ice, 5,580,657 in domestic and personal service, 
4,766,964 in trade and transportation, 7,085,992 
in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits. In 
1910, 7,678,578 persons were reported as en- 
gaged in manufacture, of whom 6,615,046 were 
wage earners. The remainder were proprietors 
and salaried employees. Housewives are not 
considered by our Census statisticians as gainfully 
employed. 

The absolute and relative number of workers 
engaged in routine work and in highly sub- 
divided forms of labor is increasing. These 
kinds of work are usually called unskilled ; but 
we are beginning to realize that the term un- 
skilled labor is a misnomer. There are, how- 
ever, many unskilled or inefficient laborers in 
all trades or occupations. The term, unskilled, 
ought to be applied to the workers rather than 
to the occupation. A large fraction of the rou- 

107 



lo8 Employment 

tine and monotonous work, not requiring con- 
siderable physical strength, is being turned over 
to women wage earners. 

2. Overwork. — In the preceding chapter, it 
was shown that from the standpoint of profits, 
the short — eight- or nine-hour — day was more 
desirable than the ten- or twelve-hour day. 
From another, and a broader, view-point the 
short working day is desirable. Long hours and 
intensity of exertion wear out the worker at a 
time when he ought to be in his prime. ^^Old 
at forty'' is too often at present the result of 
modern factory life. To reduce the intensity of 
exertion during working hours would undoubt- 
edly involve grave difficulties. The most feasible 
method of conserving human energy is that of 
reducing the length of the working day. 

This plea for the conservation of human energy 
is essentially democratic. It aims at remedying 
conditions which force the wage earners of the 
country prematurely to deplete their physical 
and intellectual energy. The industrial and the 
governmental regime which places output above 
the health and welfare of the working population 
is undemocratic. Good citizenship and racial 
uplift require a considerable modicum of leisure 
for each and every member of the community. 
Leisure, in the words of Miss Goldmark, ^ limits 
work, indeed, to make good the daily deficits, 
and to send back the worker physiologically pre- 
pared for another day. It frees the worker from 
toil before exhaustion deprives leisure of its po- 



Irregular Employment 109 

tentialities. It thus fulfills a reasoned purpose. 
As the physiological function of rest is to replace 
fatigue, so the function of the shorter day is to 
afford to working people physiological rest — with 
all that is implied further by way of leisure." 

A sweated industry is parasitic. It is a des- 
troyer of human resources. It draws into its in- 
satiable maw the youth of the land, overdrives 
them under abnormal and deteriorating condi- 
tions, and [then, having worn them out in the 
fierce race for products and profits, cynically 
throws them upon the scrap-heap of industry to 
become the wards of the nation. National efiOi- 
ciency requires regulation and improvement of 
the sweated industry. Careful investigations 
have placed the right of the worker to rest, lei- 
sure, and the absence of overstrain upon a scien- 
tific sociological basis. A sweated industry may 
be distinguished by the following somewhat in- 
definite earmarks, — low wages, a long working 
day, insanitary workshops and speeded-up or 
overdriven workers. The clothing industry has 
been the greatest of all sweated industries. 
Sweating is not confined to the small workshop ; 
sweating is often found in the factory. The great 
iron and steel industry, the meat packing estab- 
lishments, and the big department stores present 
many of the features which characterize a sweated 
industry. 

3. Irregular Employment.— Casual or irreg- 
ular labor is demoralizing. *^The man," writes 
Dr. Edward T. Devine, ** who changes constantly 



1 1 o Employment 

from job to job, with periods of idleness between^ 
comes to every job demoralized, unskilled, un- 
steady, and unfit. '^ Yet, to-day in the United 
States, the amount of unemployment and of ir- 
regular employment is alarming. The industrial 
world is confronted by a large floating, poorly 
educated, improperly trained, and undisciplined 
horde of wage earners. Young boys and girls 
leaving school early in life drifting from one blind- 
alley occupation to another are constantly recruit- 
ing the numbers. At the other end of the line, 
the older casual workers are entering the great 
and repulsive ranks of the vagrants, the unem- 
ployable, the pauper, and the criminal. One of 
the sorest spots in our social and industrial or- 
ganism is that due to the existence of the casual 
worker and the man out-of-work. 

Many industries are necessarily seasonal. A 
slack and a rush season are almost unavoidable 
in the building trades. In 1900, the Census fig- 
ures indicated that out of every 1,000 masons, 
only 445, or less than one-half, had steady work 
throughout the year. The demand for agricul- 
tural laborers is much greater in the summer 
than in the winter. Seamen on the Great Lakes 
are thrown out of employment during the winter 
seasons. The only adequate solution for seasonal 
employment seems to be the dovetailing of differ- 
ent seasonal industries. For example, the sea- 
men and the longshoremen on the Great Lakes 
might be utilized in the logging camps during 
the winter season. This solution obviously faces 



Unemployment ill 

many obstacles. There is frequently little or no 
incentive leading employers to aid in bringing 
about such an adjustment. And it is often diffi- 
cult to dovetail appropriate industries together, 
— industries requiring approximately the same 
kind of skill and training. 

4. Unemployment. — Accurate and compre- 
hensive figures as to unemployment are not avail- 
able. In New York and in Massachusetts fairly 
accurate statistics have been collected in regard 
to unemployment among organized workers. In 
Massachusetts, the percentage of unemployed in 
the membership of the unions reporting was 12.1 
percent, in 1908 ; 5.6 percent, in 1909 ; 5. 6 per cent, 
in 1910 ; 5.4 per cent, in 1911 ; and 4.5 per cent, 
in 1912. The percentage of unemployed fluctuates 
during each year. It is higher in the winter 
months than during other portions of the year. 
For the three months ending September 30, 1912, 
the percentage of unemployed was three ; and re- 
ports were received from unions having approx- 
imately seventy-five per cent, of the total mem- 
bership of all labor organizations in the State. 
In the State of New York, on March 31, 1911, 
20.3 per cent, of the union men were reported as 
unemployed, and 10.8 per cent, on September 
30th of the same year. In 1908, a year in which 
the percentage of unemployment among wage 
earners was unusually large, the average percent- 
age of unemployment among the wage earners 
^4n representative trade unions'' of New York 
reached the extraordinary rate of 29.7 per cent. 



112 Employment 

Or, on the average throughout the year, nearly 
thirty out of every 100 organized workers in the 
great State of New York were unemployed. The 
number of unemployed among the unskilled was 
probably somewhat higher. The coal mining in- 
dustry reports a very high average of slack work. 
During the best years the anthracite and bitumi- 
nous mines are idle about one-fourth of the work- 
ing days of the year. The miners are forced 
through lack of work to be idle from seventy -five 
to one hundred and twenty -five days each year. 
To this excessive amount of unemployment must 
be added that due to sickness and other causes. 

Such a situation in regard to many lines of in- 
dustry is certainly one which should startle even 
the most optimistic or conservative of Americans, 
and lead them actively to seek some remedy for 
the evils which are growing out of it. Employers 
often increase the amount of unemployment un- 
necessarily. They adopt the method of hiring a 
larger number of men than are required for 
steady operation. ^^The normal state of every 
industry, '^ declares one of the most careful stu- 
dents of unemployment, ^Ms to be overcrowded 
with labor, in the sense of having drawn into it 
more men than can ever find employment in it at 
any one time.'' The establishment or industry 
will be operated with a large force for a rush 
period, after which the plant or plants will 
be partially or entirely shut down for a time. 
An investigator who studied the coal mining in- 
dustry of West Virginia declares that the mine op- 



Unemployment 113 

erators employ from fifty to one hundred per cent, 
more men than would be needed for steady opera- 
tion. The average number of working days in the 
month for the miner is reduced to from twelve to 
seventeen.* Similar conditions obtain in oth'^r 
industries. The sweated industries usually have 
one or more rush and slack seasons in each year. 
During the rush season the workers are crowded 
to the limit of human endurance. On the other 
hand, the slack season is one of unemployment 
and idleness for many. 

The evil of ^*laying-off'' men without notice 
or warning is the cause of much unemployment, 
A factory is built and equipped, and employees 
establish their homes within a short distance 
from the site of the factory. The business is 
prosperous ; more and more wage earners are 
employed. The demand for the output of the 
establishment is overestimated, and presently 
the manager discovers that he is producing too 
large an output to be disposed of at a profit. 
This jerky method of doing business leads to 
alternate periods of taking on and laying off 
workers. Employees who have come to the 
factory community expecting a permanent job 
are suddenly discharged. Unemployment, job 
hunting, scarcity, want, and, perhaps, the 
necessity of removal to another home, face the 
man who is laid off and his family. This is 
especially disastrous for the man who marries 
and undertakes to establish a good home. And 

^ The Survey, April 5, 1913. 



114 Employment 

this process usually takes place wholly with 
reference to profits and not to the welfare of the 
working force and their families. Organized 
workers and the general public have good rea- 
sons for insisting that employers earnestly en- 
deavor to spread their work out more evenly 
throughout the year and even through a period 
of years. But so long as an excess of unorganized, 
unskilled and unattached workers can be found 
outside the factory doors and around the mines, 
little incentive will be given the employer to 
systematize his work so as to avoid rush and 
slack seasons. A considerable supply of casual 
workers is also quite effective in keeping down 
wages and in discouraging the activity of union 
organizers. 

5. Looking for Jobs. — The labor market, com- 
pared with the market for ordinary articles of 
merchandise, is in a disorganized condition. 
The average wage earner out of a job is still 
forced to go from employer to employer, from 
place to place, seeking employment. The method 
of finding a job corresponds quite closely to the 
discarded pack -pedlar method of selling goods. 
The market and the store are now the established 
instrumentalities utilized for bringing the com- 
modities produced to the consumer. The em- 
ployment bureau is the corresponding agency for 
facilitating the purchase and sale of labor power. 
Like the store, the normal function of the em- 
ployment bureau is not to create a demand for 
labor or to increase the amount of labor power. 



Looking for Jobs 1 15 

Its aim is solely that of bringing purchasers and 
sellers of labor power together in a systematic 
and businesslike manner. As yet employment 
agencies in the United States, with few excep- 
tions, are crude and inefficient instruments. The 
managers of employment agencies are not as a 
rule thoroughly conversant with the merchandise 
which they supply. They are not as expert as 
the managers of stores or of departments in a 
department store. Too often the employer is 
unable to rely upon the judgment of the manager 
of the employment bureau. Labor power is a 
complex and unstandardized commodity, but the 
obstacles which tend to prevent placing its pur- 
chase and sale upon a business basis are not in- 
superable. The need of an efficient method of 
marketing labor power is pressing. Not only 
is drifting from job to job a demoralizing prac- 
tice, but the discouraging, disheartening, aim- 
less search for a job on the part of the unem- 
ployed is wasteful and demoralizing. Many a 
man who started out bravely and hopefully in 
search of a job has been transformed into a 
vagrant and an unemployable by the long-con- 
tinued search. A well- organized system of em- 
ployment bureaus could not make jobs, but it 
would reduce the number of industrial maladjust- 
ments and the amount of unemployment. The 
function of the employment bureau is both intra- 
industrial and inter-industrial. 

In the United States, three different kinds of 
employment agencies exist : private, operated 



Il6 Employment 

for profit ; private, operated by philanthropic 
associations ; and free public employment bu- 
reaus. The private employment agency of the 
first type is found in nearly all cities. Some of 
these agencies perform a desirable service^ but 
many of them are operated by unprincipled 
managers who often defraud the poor and help- 
less seeker for employment. In 1904, Miss 
Kellor found 522 licensed private agencies in 
Ifew York City. Over one-half of the private 
agencies in large cities exclusively supply 
workers for the household. The employment 
agencies connected with the Y. M. C. A. and the 
Y. W. C. A., and with the associated charities of 
various cities do much good work. In 1912, 
fifteen States and a few cities in other States 
provided for free employment bureaus. In no 
State is the number maintained more than six, 
and in several only one such office is maintained. 
No State of the United States has as yet organized 
a unified system of free employment agencies. 

5. Homeless Workers. — The conditions 
which to-day surround the workers in a number 
of the basic industries make for irregularity and 
u degeneracy. ^^The woodmen are to-day home- 
less workers in logging camps ; ice is also cut by 
the homeless man living in the bunk-house. 
Construction gangs working on railways, canals, 
reservoirs, and the like, are often herded together 
like cattle and live in insanitary quarters. Ber- 
ries are picked, beet and onion fields weeded, 
and the grain of the West harvested by a class of 



The Unemployable 1 1 7 

floating workers living and working under ab- 
normal conditions, — conditions which endanger 
the physical and moral stamina of the workers. 
At the conclusion of the season many drift back 
to the cities to increase the debauchery, disease, 
and crime of our crowded centres of population. '^ ^ 
The abnormal life and the irregularity of the 
work make the social and moral problems con- 
nected with these elemental occupations very 
dif&cult of solution. Although it is primarily a 
rural problem, the drift back to the cities from 
time to time and during seasons of idleness makes 
the homeless worker in the country districts an 
additional complicating factor in our complex 
city problem. These homeless and temporarily 
idle workers increase the amount of drinking, 
gambling, debauchery, and crime in our cities. 
Many recent immigrants are of the mobile, float- 
ing type without strong home ties. They go 
readily from place to place, and they are not 
particular as to food, lodging, or working con- 
ditions. 

7. The Unemployable. — At the bottom of 
the heap, pressed and crowded, is the great re- 
pulsive mass of the unemployable of working 
age, — defective, debilitated, crippled, crimiual, 
vagrant. Since the American people are passing 
through a period of adjustment to city life and to 
large-scale, subdivided industry, a considerable 
percentage of the unadjustable and unemployable 

*The writer in **The History and Problems of Organized 
Labor," p. 377, 



Il8 Employment 

may be anticipated ; but the large and increasing 
number of persons who must be classified as un- 
employable is becoming alarming even to those 
of an optimistic temperament. Eeputable author- 
ities unite in insistently pointing to the menacing 
increase in the number of defectives. Unneces- 
sary sickness, insanitary homes and workshops, 
overwork, improper care and feeding of children 
and adults, a lack of adequate nourishment, 
liquor drinking, the drug habit, and vice are 
daily adding to the roll of the debilitated. Ac- 
cidents on railways, in factories, and in mines are 
producing a great host of cripples and incapaci- 
tated. But the American people are being awak- 
ened to the problems connected with these classes 
of the unemployable. The 'propaganda for the 
conservation of the human resources of the na- 
tion is in no small measure directed against the 
causes which produce defectives, cripples, and 
debilitated persons. But even a brief considera- 
tion of the solution of the problems connected 
with these unfortunates and the criminals cannot 
be entered into in this volume. 

The vagrants in the United States probably 
number about 500,000. This great drab army of 
tatterdemalions has been considered to be ^*a 
national joke." But it has been estimated that 
each vagrant receives on the average an income 
of $200 per year, or, if these estimates be fairly 
accurate, about $100,000,000 is spent annually 
upon this ^* national joke.'' The tramp produces 
nothing ; he adds considerably to the judicial and 



The Unemployable 119 

police expenditures. The '^ knight of the road '' 
is too expensive, too dangerous, and too numer- 
ous to be longer treated as a joke. 

The tramp proper is a nomad. In primitive 
times, all persons were nomadic. Many of the 
American pioneers and frontiersmen were semi- 
nomadic. They followed the frontier line west- 
ward, moving from time to time as more settlers 
moved in. The twentieth century tramp is not 
purely a product of modern social and industrial 
conditions ; the wanderlust is inherited. The 
tramp becomes more apparent as conditions be- 
come more settled, and as routine and regularity 
become increasingly characteristic of the business 
world. Nevertheless, irregular work, frequent 
discharges, and overwork lead many a young 
man, who otherwise would become an efficient and 
regular worker, to become a hobo. In the event 
of a crisis, a period of slack work, or some local 
industrial maladjustment, men are thrown out of 
work ; they begin to tramp looking for jobs. 
Presently they find tramping an easy method of 
getting a living and of ^^ seeing the world" ; too 
many sympathetic, kind-hearted, but thoughtless, 
persons are willing to give them ^^ hand-outs" 
without applying the work test. In many cases, 
never again will these amateur tramps hold jobs 
for any considerable lengths of time. The con- 
trast between the regular job with its routine and 
punctuality and the care-free life of the vagrant 
is marked, and the latter has its strong appeal. 
The lure of the primitive is strong. 



1 20 Employment 

Again, an overworked, under-developed chCd 
worker frequently gets a taste of vacation and of 
tramp life, and never again can he be dragged back 
into routine made loathsome by premature toil as 
a wage earner. The semi-automatic machine re- 
quiring a monotonous, routine kind of work for 
a long working^day from the machine tender, is 
responsible for the evolution of a large number of 
youthful workers into ^^ rolling stones,'^ casual 
workers, and finally unemployables. Many a 
young man enters a blind-alley occupation, and 
soon becomes dissatisfied with the routine or the 
lack of opportunity for advancement. Monotony 
and routine are especially distasteful to the young. 
Day after day, his work grows more and more 
repulsive. Suddenly one day he leaves in disgust 
or is discharged. He gets another position ; and 
the experience is repeated. Soon he drifts down- 
ward, he becomes first a casual worker, and finally 
an unemployable. Such is the brief, tragic 
life history of a great army of youths who are 
early forced into industry by adverse circum- 
stances, or leave school scorning a low-paid ap- 
prenticeship-job leading to future usefulness, to 
enter an occupation paying a relatively high 
wage but without opportunity for future ad- 
vancement. Youth, untrained and unadvised, is 
ever careless of the future. To them the present 
looms up big and fascinating. Large employers 
are realizing that the source of trained workers is 
drying up; they are *' feeling the pinch.'' The 
problems connected with the industrial and vo- 



Summary 111 

cational training of the young are important from 
both the industrial and the social view-points. 

Summary . 

The plea for the short working day and for the 
conservation of human energy is essentially demo- 
cratic. 

A sweated industry is parasitic. 

Irregular employment is demoralizing. 

The extent of unemployment in the United 
States is alarming. 

The labor market is not well organized. Em- 
ployment bureaus are not efScient agencies for 
the sale of labor power. 

The homeless worker furnishes the American 
people with a perplexing problem. 

At the bottom of the heap of humans is the 
mass of unemployables. 

The vagrant is not *'a national joke.'' 

Irregular work or long-continued monotonous 
work is a potent cause of vagrancy. 

Suggestive Questions 

How does your town or city deal with tramps ? 

How large a percentage of the youth of your 
town or cummunity enter ^* blind-alley'' occupa- 
tions ? 

What are the conditions in the cheap lodging 
houses of your city ? 

What is being done for the unemployed? 



vm 

ORGANIZED LABOR IN THE 
UNITED STATES 

WHY Labor is Organized. — It has been 
pointed out that industrial progress 
has taken the ownership of the tools 
or machines and of the finished product out 
of the hands of the workers. The worker has 
become a wage earner. He sells his labor power 
and receives a definite contractual income, — 
wages. The modern labor organization is an 
unmistakable sign of the existence of a distinct 
line of cleavage between employers and em- 
ployees. Before the Civil War American labor 
organizations were weak and ephemeral. Large- 
scale industry was still in the making, and vast 
areas of fertile public land still remained untilled 
and unclaimed. But since the war consolidation 
in industry has led the wage earner to under- 
stand that his opportunity to become a small 
capitalist and an employer is slight. In the 
words of John Mitchell, ''the average wage 
earner has made up his mind that he must re- 
main a wage earner. '^ Many who under more 
primitive conditions would have eagerly looked 
forward to a career as a small business man must 
now be content with the more prosaic positions 
offered by large corporations. The blocking of 

122 



The Structure of Labor Organizations 123 

the road to wealth and independent business 
careers is cementing the workers together. Class 
lines are being drawn more distinctly ; and the 
labor organizations are here,— permanent, ag- 
gressive, hopeful, and provided with leaders. 

The writer has elsewhere pointed out that 
"labor is organized primarily because it is 
vitally interested in the amount, method, and 
time of remuneration for the labor of wage 
earners/' The individual, unorganized wage 
earner cannot hope to drive an equitable bargain 
with capital aggregated into corporations. The 
rise of labor organizations parallels the evolu- 
tion of large-scale industry. The union com- 
bines the units in the field of labor ; the cor- 
poration combines the units in the realm of 
capital. To refuse to recognize the right of 
labor to organize into unions and at the same 
time to favor the organization of corporations 
and of employers' associations, is illogical ; and 
such an attitude offers conclusive evidence of 
bias and prejudice. It is true that labor organi- 
sations, and corporations also, often use unfair, 
dictatorial, and cruel methods. But this is not 
a sufficient reason for demanding the elimination 
of either. 

2. The Structure of Labor Organizations. — 
American labor organizations vary greatly in gov- 
ernment, policies, methods, and ideals. Some, 
like the aristocrats of organized labor, the 
brotherhood of locomotive engineers, rarely use 
the strike, and manifest little interest in the 



124 Organized Labor in the United States 

closed shop or in apprenticeship rules; others, 
like the coal miners, are insistent in regard to the 
closed shop ; and the unionists of the building 
trades emphasize the importance of the strike. 
The cigar makers have inaugurated a successful 
and considerable system of benefits for members 
who are sick, disabled, or out of work. Some 
unions use the strike frequently, others rarely ; 
certain unions are radical, others are conserva- 
tive. In the case of some organizations, the 
locals are nearly self-governing ; in other unions 
the national organization exercises a large amount 
of supervision over the locals. 

The policies and methods employed by labor 
organizations have been developed, as was the 
unwritten English constitution, in a piecemeal 
manner. As different organizations have met 
with very different obstacles and have developed 
under very different circumstances, this variation 
in structure is normal. In general, immediate 
results have been demanded of their leaders by 
the rank and file of unionists. And the peculiar- 
ities of union structure have been evolved under 
the pressure of an opportunist policy. The suc- 
cessful leader of the strong American labor or- 
ganizations is an exponent of ^^ business union- 
ism'' ; he is the man who can get higher wages, 
shorter hours, or other concessions for the mem- 
bers of his union. It has been observed that 
each country gets the agitators it deserves ; like- 
wise each country and each industry develops 
the type of labor organization it deserves. The 



Trade and Industrial Unions 125 

peculiarities of structure and the metliods em- 
ployed by a particular labor organization are 
the outgrowth of the particular conditions and 
balance of forces in the particular industry con- 
cerned. 

3. Trade and Industrial Unions. — In spite 
of the many and important variations among 
labor organizations, two quite distinct classes 
may be discerned : — trade or craft, and industrial 
unions. The trade or craft union is the older 
form and is especially adapted to the organization 
of workers in a skilled trade. Into a trade union 
are organized only workers belonging to one trade 
or craft as, for example, carpenters or printers. 
In a local of the International Typographical 
Union are found printers from different printing- 
offices in a city or town. The pressmen and 
lithographers in a given establishment do not 
belong to the same union as the printers. The 
latter may have a dispute with their employers 
and go on a strike ; but the pressmen may con- 
tinue at work and work with ^^scab'' printers 
brought in as strike breakers. The trade or craft 
rather than the establishment is the unit. 

The industrial union recognizes the establish- 
ment or plant as the fundamental unit. Into an 
industrial union are gathered all the workers, 
skilled and unskilled, working in a given establish- 
ment. The brewery workers and the coal miners 
are organized as industrial unions. All workers 
in and around the mines are organized in the 
TJnited Mine Workers' Union. The Industrial 



126 Organized Labor in the United States 

Workers of the World represent a radical or 
revolutionary type of industrial unionism. When 
a labor dispute arises in connection with an in- 
dustrial union, all workers in the plant are di- 
rectly affected and interested. A strike on the 
part of a well-organized industrial union will tie 
up the entire establishment. 

4. The American Federation of Labor. — 
The most inclusive American labor organization 
of to-day is the American Federation of Labor. 
This organization, as its name indicates, is a 
federation of unions. Individual unionists have 
little or no direct connection with it. In 1912, the 
American Federation was composed of ^ve de- 
partments, 112 national or international unions, 
41 state federations, 560 city central bodies, 434 
local trade unions, and 156 federal labor unions. 
The five departments were the building trades, 
mining, railway employees, metal trades, and 
union label trades. JTearly all of the impor- 
tant national or international unions belong to 
the Federation. The railway brotherhoods, the 
Bricklayers and Masons' Union, and the National 
Association of Letter Carriers are among the im- 
portant unions outside the Federation. 

The American Federation of Labor is con- 
trolled by the national and international unions, 
and the departments are also controlled by the 
national unions. In the annual convention of 
1911, the voting strength of the national unions 
was 17,104 out of a total vote of 17,240. The 
total paid-up membership of the American Fed- 



American Federation Branches 127 

eration in September, 1913, was 2,054,526. This 
is somewhat less than the total membership of 
the unions affiliated because some of the locals 
are ^^tax dodgers,'' and report less than their 
actual membership. There are probably not 
more than 600,000 or 700,000 American unionists 
outside the American Federation of Labor. The 
great bulk of the revenues of the Federation are 
derived from per capita assessments upon the 
affiliated bodies. Samuel Gompers is the presi- 
dent of the organization, and John Mitchell was, 
until January, 1914, one of its vice-presidents. 

The American Federation is not a powerful 
body exercising considerable authority over the 
federated bodies. ^^ According to its constitu- 
tion, the chief purposes of the American Fed- 
eration of Labor are to knit the national and 
international labor unions together for mutual 
assistance, to encourage the sale of union label 
articles, to secure legislation favorable to the 
interests of the working people, to influence 
public opinion in favor of organized labor, to 
aid and encourage the labor press, and to aid in 
the formation of local unions.^' ^ 

5. Affiliated Branches of the American 
Federation of Labor.— The primary unit in 
labor organizations is the ^4ocal.'' In a trade 
union, a local is composed of workers in a given 
trade, living in one locality. These locals usually 
belong in turn to a national (sometimes called 

^Carlton, " History and Problems of Organized Labor,'' 
pp. 79-80. 



128 Organized Labor in the United States 

international) union. A national union ig a fed- 
eration of locals. The locals of carpenters belong 
to a national union of carpenters. In some unions 
the national organization is very powerful and 
controls and directs the locals; in others the 
locals are strong and may strike or adopt certain 
policies without reference to the national union. 
In the industrial unions, like the United Mine 
Workers, various craftsmen may be brought 
together in one local. This was the method 
employed by the Knights of Labor. 

Locals may also be grouped into state and city 
federations. The work of these bodies is chiefly 
political and educational. They exercise little 
direct control over the activities of the locals. 
A local in a trade which as yet has no national 
union may be directly affilliated with the Amer- 
ican Federation of Labor. A federal union is a 
mixed local union in which men of different 
trades are brought together. It is a temporary 
expedient only. As soon as a sufficient number 
of one trade are recruited, a local of that trade 
should be formed. A local may belong to a na- 
tional union affiliated with the American Federa- 
tion of Labor. It may also belong to a state and 
city federation, both of which may likewise be af- 
filiated with the American Federation. And the 
national union to which it belongs may be con- 
nected with a department of the Federation. 

6. The Industrial Workers of the World. — 
The American Federation of Labor accepts the 
present capitalistic system ; the Industrial Work- 



The Industrial Workers of the World 1 29 

ers of the World is a socialist and revolutionary 
organization. The latter aims to eliminate the 
capitalist and the present wage system. Craft or 
trade lines are obliterated in this radical labor 
organization. In a given establishment all wage 
earners would be grouped in one or more locals 
irrespective of the kind of work performed. The 
organization has a central executive committee 
and holds an annual convention. The member- 
ship of the Industrial Workers of the World is 
small and fluctuating. Its strength lies in its 
passionate appeal to class hatred and to the 
solidarity of the wage earners. Its strength is 
found in its destructive power, rather than in 
any constructive program. 

The Industrial Workers are at present divided 
into two branches, each of which claims to be 
the original and genuine organization. The 
Detroit branch is closely connected with the 
Socialist Labor Party, and emphasizes the im- 
portance of organization in the political as well 
as the industrial field. The Chicago branch 
is the more aggressive and widely known. It 
seems to have little confidence in political action, 
and exhibits some of the earmarks of anarchism. 
The leaders of the Chicago branch are advocates 
of direct action, the mass strike, sabotage, and 
other strenuous practices. Sabotage is a word of 
somewhat uncertain meaning ranging from wreck- 
ing industrial plants and railways to diluting the 
efficiency of a plant by a system of concerted 
soldiering, or by rigid obedience to the exact 



130 Organized Labor in the United States 

letter of all orders. Sabotage might mean that 
the shipping clerks of a manufacturing establish- 
ment would deliberately and concertedly mis- 
send goods, or that the cooks and waiters in a 
hotel would put unpalatable substances in the 
food served. 

7. The Future of Industrial Unionism.— 
The trend of industrial evolution indicates that 
industrial unionism will grow in strength relative 
to trade or craft unionism. The friends of the 
former assert that it adapts itself to the condi- 
tions of modern industry. Trade unionism was 
the form adapted to small-scale industry ; but 
the growth of large-scale business tends to make 
it an out-of-date form of organization. As 
machinery destroys trades and makes certain 
forms of skilled work useless, trade or craft 
unionism is weakened and the ^^one big union ^^ 
grows in potential strength. The employing 
corporation of to-day employs a multitude of 
workers, skilled and unskilled ; and union 
organization should, it is urged, parallel the 
organization of the plant. The old-line trade 
union cannot successfully cope with the giant 
trust of to-day. The largest and, perhaps, the 
strongest national union affiliated with the 
American Federation of Labor is an industrial 
union, — the United Mine Workers. The two 
forms of unions, trade and industrial, might 
exist side by side. Stationary engineers, work- 
ing for a coal mining company, might belong to 
both the United Mine Workers and the Inter' 



Employers' Associations 131 

national Union of Steam Engineers. The In- 
dustrial Workers of the World is an extreme and 
radical type of industrial unionism which, of 
course, is not affiliated with the American 
Federation of Labor. 

In the industrial union the unskilled men are 
in the majority. To the unskilled industrial 
unionist, the solidarity of labor is a real, living 
ideal. Industrial demarkation, jurisdictional 
disputes, and even racial antipathies tend to 
disappear under the potent influence of the 
union card of the industrial unionist. The 
growth of industrial unionism, evolved because 
of extreme subdivision of labor and the increase 
of the unskilled and the machine tenders, relative 
to the old-line craftsmen, is bringing the nation 
to the threshold of a new era in unionism. The 
skilled are now finding it to their advantage to 
amalgamate and fraternize with the unskilled. 
They are beginning to realize that a depressed 
stratum of workers is a menace to the skilled and 
relatively well-paid workers. Professor Patten 
finds industrial unionism to be a great force for 
uniting all grades of labor. ** Utilitarian in its 
motive, and passionately selfish in its singleness 
and intensity of purpose, it has a social and 
ethical significance that is without parallel in the 
institutions of democracy : it is the first great 
coalition of the economic powers of the basal 
men and the high-grade, skilled workers.'^ 

8. Employers' Associations. — An employ- 
ers' association is the trade union of employers. 



132 Organized Labor in the United States "^ 

It is organized to advance the interests of em- 
ployers and to resist the aggressions of labor 
organizations. Employers' associations often 
resort to practices similar to those of labor or- 
ganizations. For the strike, they use the lock- 
out, instead of the boycott is used the blacklist, 
instead of pickets are used spies and armed 
guards. The National Association of Manu- 
facturers is the American Federation of Labor 
of the employers. An establishment is a local ; 
and there are state employers' associations and 
city associations. Dues and special assessments 
are paid by the firms affiliated; and defense 
funds are accumulated. 

Employers' associations may be divided into 
two general types. The first and more conserva- 
tive type recognizes labor organizations to be 
legitimate. Trade agreements in regard to wages, 
hours, and the conditions of employment are 
made from time to time between associations of 
the first type and the organizations of employees. 
The Stove Founders' Defense Association and 
the association of soft coal mine operators are 
fine examples of this sort of employers' associa- 
tions. In these two industries, strong and sane 
employers' associations confront well-organized 
labor unions. Collective bargaining on a large 
scale has been utilized, and for the strike is sub- 
stituted the trade agreement and arbitration. 
The possibility of serious labor disputes in these 
industries is not eliminated, but the probability 
of such troubles is reduced. 



Employers' Associations 133 

The second class of employers' associations is 
bitterly antagonistic to labor organizations, or at 
least to labor organizations which are strong and 
virile. The members favor labor organizations 
of the weak type which teach contentment with 
existing conditions. The writer has elsewhere 
contrasted the two as follows: ^^The first type 
aims to check the abuses and excesses of organ- 
ized labor; the second is hostile to the funda- 
mental principles of unionism and wishes to 
extirpate or emasculate unionism.'' The Na- 
tional Association of Manufacturers and its 
afaiiated associations are of the second type. 
The class consciousness of the members of this 
association is a marked phenomenon. The reiter- 
ated assertions that ^' We intend to run our own 
business" and ^^ There is nothing to arbitrate," 
sound like voices from the distant past. The 
hatred of the leaders for the average unionist and 
his organization is portentous of future class con- 
flicts. The following from the lips of a former 
president of the Association leaves no room for 
compromise or conciliation. It is a savage ap- 
peal to arms. ^*No organization of men, not 
excepting the Ku Klux Klan, the Mafia, or the 
Black Hand Society, has ever produced such a 
record of barbarism as has this so-called organ- 
ized labor society which through misdirected 
sympathy, apathy, and indifference, has been 
permitted to grow up to cripple our industries, 
and to trample in the dust the natural and con- 
stitutional rights of our citizens.'' And this 



134 Organized Labor in the United States 

attack is directed against the American Federa- 
tion of Labor, not against the Industrial Work- 
ers of the World. 

9. The Effect of the Antagonism between 
Employers' Associations and Labor Organ- 
izations.— The bitter and short-sighted antago- 
nism of employers' associations and of certain 
large trusts is forcing organized labor to become 
aggressive and to adopt new policies or suffer 
disintegration. The worst episode in the recent 
history of labor organizations, the McNamara 
affair, arose in connection with a labor organiza- 
tion which was indirectly confronted in a life and 
death struggle by the United States Steel Cor- 
poration or interests closely affiliated with it. 
Hostile court decisions such as the Danbury 
Hatters' case and those connected with the prose- 
cution of Gompers, Mitchell and Morrison, the 
highest officials of the American Federation of 
Labor, are also leading conservative unionists 
to question the efficiency of the time-honored 
methods of bargaining, striking, and boycotting. 
Six years ago Professor Commons reached the 
conclusion that ^^it does not seem likely, when a 
corporation has reached the position of a trust, 
that unionism will get a footing, no matter how 
class-conscious the workmen have become. '' In 
spite of repeated efforts labor organizations have 
been unable to gain a foothold in the mills of the 
United States Steel Corporation. 

When confronted by great obstacles in the 
form of hostile corporations whose policy is to 



Associations and Organizations 135 

destroy unionism not to treat with union rep- 
resentatives, certain labor organizations have 
deliberately turned to violence and dynamiting. 
Their leaders knowing of no legitimate methods 
other than those used by the old-line trade 
unions, and seeing only destruction ahead, 
adopted the cruel and primitive method of 
terrorism. And, it must also be said, employ- 
ers have also, on occasion, grasped the same 
weapon, — of which the recent labor difficulties 
in the coal-mining industry of West Virginia 
bear eloquent testimony. Another type of work- 
ers have turned to the idea of a mass union 
or syndicalism emphasizing the general strike, 
sabotage, and the overthrow of the capitalist 
and the wage system. The syndicalist does 
not believe in arbitration or trade agreements. 
^^ There is nothing nice or polite '^ about the 
program of the syndicalist. Syndicalism, repre- 
sented in this country by the radicals of the 
Industrial Workers of the World, spells anarchy 
rather than democracy. 

A third, and a very important and increasing, 
group when confronted by bitter opposition, and 
after learning that victories on the economic field 
are to be few and far between, is turning to the 
political field. A portion of this class is trying 
to elect labor representatives through the old 
parties. The more radical and class-conscious 
portion is turning to the Socialist Party. The 
returns from political action are less immediate, 
personal, and tangible than those derived as the 



136 Organized Labor in the United States 

result of action in the economic field. And for 
a labor organization to turn from the economic 
field in which its successes have been gained to 
the untried political field, indicates that the 
opposition is formidable, and that class con- 
sciousness among the workers is developing. 

10. The Advance Agent of Radical Union- 
ism. — It is folly for employers' associations to 
expect permanently to eliminate labor organiza- 
tions. The conservation of labor organizations, 
not their destruction, is desirable. To destroy the 
organizations of the better class now affiliated with 
the American Federation of Labor would be a 
great national calamity because organizations of 
the revolutionary type would inevitably replace 
those destroyed. Sabotage, violence, and indus- 
trial warfare would replace collective bargaining 
and strikes which are conducted in a relatively 
peaceful manner. The revolutionary mass union 
would become the dominant type of unionism. 

The employer who arbitrarily and scornfully 
refuses to recognize the union or to treat collect- 
ively with his employees, is an excellent pro- 
moter of radical, uncompromising unionism 
which rejects trade agreements and stands for 
sabotage and the social revolution. President 
Gompers of the American Federation of Labor 
has described the option open to employers. 
^' The problem now resolves itself into a question 
of what kind of organization they wish to deal 
with, — a responsible union employing business 
methods, or organizations unwilling to make and 



Summary 137 

keep contracts, unwilling to promote individual 
restraint and collective discipline, fearing to give 
the workers any present relief lest their despair 
and misery be lessened and Utopian possibilities 
lose their charm. ^' The proud, imperious em- 
ployers, ignorant of industrial history, are often 
the best advance agents of radical unionism and 
of syndicalism. 

Summary 

The labor organization is a product of modern 
industrial development. 

Labor organizations differ greatly in struc- 
ture, methods and ideals. The peculiarities of 
union structure have evolved under the pressure 
of an opportunist policy. 

The trade union is older and more conserva- 
tive than the industrial union. The latter is 
patterned after the organization of industrial 
plants. 

The American Federation of Labor is a feder- 
ation composed chiefly of national unions. 

The Industrial Workers of the World is a social- 
istic organization of wage workers. 

Industrial unionism is likely to gain upon trade 
unionism. 

Employers' associations use policies quite sim- 
ilar to those of labor organizations. 

The bitter antagonism of certain employers' 
associations is forcing labor organizations to adopt 
direct-action methods. 

Suggestive Questions 

Has any group or organization connected with 
your church studied the problems of organized 
labor ? 



138 Organized Labor in the United States 

How extensively is labor organized in your 
community ? Employers I 

What is the attitude of employers in your com- 
munity towards labor organizations ? 

What is being done to bring about a better 
understanding between employers and em- 
ployees! 



IX 

INDUSTRIAL BETTERMENT 

VOLUNTARY Action on the Part of 
Employers. — The bulk of the proposals 
for industrial betterment may be classi- 
fied into four groups : — voluntary action on the 
part of employers, the pressure of organized 
labor, legislative activity, and the organization 
of consumers. In order to achieve the best re- 
sults social action should proceed simultaneously 
along each of the four lines. The general public 
can take an active part in promoting proposals 
classified under the third and fourth groups. 
Employers may improve industrial conditions 
for one or both of two reasons, — because of hu- 
manitarian sentiments entertained by them, and 
because of a desire to obtain a higher degree of 
efficiency in their business. The first has not as 
yet proven strong enough, except in a compara- 
tively small number of cases, to be effective. 
The pressure of competition often forces em- 
ployers to adopt methods which they abhor. 
The problem is that of the ^^ twentieth man.'' 
If nineteen retail merchants out of twenty in a 
small city are willing to close their stores in the 
evening, the twentieth man may prevent such 
action by refusing to act in unison with the 

139 



140 Industrial Betterment 

others. Many employers subjected to the stress 
of competition feel that they are unable to im- 
prove conditions in their stores or factories be- 
cause of anticipated increased costs. If their 
competitors do not adopt the same methods, 
voluntarily or otherwise, they fear, and often 
with reason, the disastrous effects of competition. 

In the case of corporations having more or less 
monopoly power and a considerable amount of 
watered stock, the insistent demand of absentee 
stockholders for dividends often produces practi- 
cally the same effect as the pressure of competi- 
tion. The improvement of working conditions 
because of the humanitarian sentiments of the 
employer is, therefore, seriously interfered with 
by the demand for dividends and profits, and by 
the stern pressure of competition. Philanthropy 
likewise offers no important program for in- 
dustrial betterment. 

In recent years, many corporations are coming 
to believe that the efficiency of their plant de- 
pends in a large measure upon the working and 
living conditions surrounding their employees. 
As a consequence, many corporations are im- 
proving the sanitary conditions in stores and 
factories and introducing what is commonly 
called welfare work. Some employers frankly 
admit that they have taken these steps as a busi- 
ness proposition, to increase the efficiency of 
their workers, to make the latter more con- 
tented, and, consequently, to increase the profits 
of the company. It may be noted that a corpora- 



The Pressure of Organized Labor 141 

tion which is well established, which looks for- 
ward to continued corporate existence for a long 
period of years, and which considers its business 
to be on a permanent footing, has greater in- 
centives to liberal and kindly treatment of em- 
ployees than has an ephemeral business. The 
well-established business must look far into the 
future. It is interested in the probable character 
of the labor force a generation hence. Imme- 
diate profits are in a measure subordinated to 
the prospect of continued and future profits. 
Nevertheless, the employee is still considered to 
be a producing machine. Leisure, recreation, 
and a safe and sanitary working environment 
are desirable from the employer's view-point be- 
cause they tend to increase the efficiency of the 
working force of the business, and to increase 
the profits derived therefrom. This point of 
view is quite different from that of the employee 
who considers his work as a means to a very 
different end. There are quite obvious limita- 
tions to industrial betterment through voluntary 
action on the part of employers. Competition 
and the demand for immediate profits often 
operate adversely. And under the most favor- 
able circumstances, voluntary action on the part 
of employers is paternalistic, and therefore more 
or less distasteful to many classes of employees. 

2. The Pressure of Organized Labor. — 
Employees banded together in a labor organiza- 
tion are able to bargain with their employer more 
nearly on a plane of equality than can the indi- 



142 Industrial Betterment 

vidual, unorganized worker. As was indicated 
in a preceding chapter, organized labor may 
raise wages within certain somewhat indefinite 
limits, but trade union action cannot directly and 
effectively attack monopoly profits or land rents. 
Most students of labor problems agree, however, 
that organized labor has been a direct and po- 
tent factor in raising the rate of wages, in reducing 
the length of the working day, and in improving 
working conditions. In the present industrial 
situation, labor organized is labor in its normal 
form. Organized labor is essential to a fair and 
equitable wage bargain. But the part played by 
organized labor in industrial betterment has 
certain very definite limitations. 

3, Legislative Action. — The great third 
party, the general public, takes a hand in indus- 
trial betterment through legislative action. Both 
employers and employees also use their influence 
as individuals or as organizations to obtain legis- 
lation. Legislative acts in connection with in- 
dustry are passed under the pressure of at least 
three interests, — labor, capital, and the general 
public. Through legislative action uniform reg- 
ulations may be established affecting alike all 
employers and employees within a given class or 
group. By means of legislative action, a new 
limit may be fixed beyond which competition is 
no longer allowed to force an employer or an 
employee. A child labor law, for example, pro- 
hibits all employers in certain lines of industry 
from employing children below a certain age. 



Organization of Consumers 1 43 

All employers, humane and otherwise, are thus 
placed on the same footing in this one phase of 
competition. A minimum wage law narrows the 
competitive sphere. The humane employer can 
no longer be forced by the pressure of an un- 
scrupulous competitor to pay starvation wages or 
go out of business. The latter is precluded by 
law from paying starvation wages. The pur- 
pose of industrial legislation is to place limita- 
tions upon private property rights, to establish 
limits to the competitive field, and to regulate 
monopolistic businesses. Legislative action may 
end ^^ jungle" or ^^ tooth-and-claw^' competition, 
and establish the limits beyond which monopo- 
lists are not allowed to go. Some of the chief 
forms of labor legislation are : — in regard to the 
hours of labor, sanitary conditions and safety 
appliances, workingmen's compensation in case 
of accident, sickness insurance, old age pensions, 
the minimum wage, and industrial training. 

4. Organization of Consumers. — Practically 
all individuals are consumers of products pro- 
duced by wage earners. Therefore, practically 
everybody is directly interested in the character 
of the articles produced in our industrial estab- 
lishments, and also in the conditions under which 
these articles are produced, transported, and sold. 
The consumers are everywhere, but organizations 
of consumers are difficult to form and to make 
effective agents. It is so difficult for the average 
individual to picture the evils of the sweat-shop, 
the unclean bakery, or the foul cannery ; and the 



144 Industrial Betterment 

cheap product attracts the bargain hunter. The 
National Consumers' League has been organized 
to fight sweat-shops and stores conducted under 
'' unfair '^ conditions. Stores and manufactories 
in which the labor laws are obeyed, and operat- 
ing with proper care as to purity of product, 
cleanliness, and sanitary conditions, are placed 
upon the '' white list " of the League and are al= 
lowed to use the label of the League. The trade 
union label is placed on many articles made by 
trade unionists. 

Small local groups of consumers could accom- 
plish much in the way of improving the quality 
of goods by refusing to purchase of storekeepers 
who violate labor laws or the regulations in re- 
gard to health and cleanliness, and by refusing to 
purchase goods which are not produced under 
proper conditions. Intelligent, aggressive, and 
united action on the part of even small groups 
can accomplish much. The sweater, the adul- 
terator, and the maker of shoddy goods are eager 
to make profits ; it is to make profits that they 
enter upon such nefarious businesses. If only a 
small number of consumers would steadfastly re- 
fuse to purchase their output, they would mend 
their ways. Inspection, publicity, united action, 
and a reasonably stiff back-bone, are powerful 
forces making for betterment. The organization 
of the earnest, humanity -loving men and women 
of each community into local pure food commit- 
tees and civic leagues is very desirable. Definite, 
cooperative action may in this manner be ob* 



Public Opinion 145 

tained. Such organizations should be potent 
factors in publicity work, and in the enactment 
and enforcement of laws relating to the health 
and morals of the community. 

5. Public Opinion, — Industrial betterment in 
the last analysis depends in no small measure 
upon the force of public opinion. If public 
opinion can be crystallized against night work 
for women and children, the seven-day week, the 
sweat-shop, the starvation wage, and the fire-trap 
tenement, these evils will soon disappear. Pub- 
lic opinion has ostracized the thug, the poisoner, 
and the red-handed murderer ; but we only 
mildly disapprove of the adulterator, the em- 
ployer of child labor, the man who pays starva- 
tion wages, and the man who refuses to install 
safety devices and fire-escapes in his shop, factory 
or store. Such as these are, however, the most 
dangerous men of to-day, ^^Your up-to-date 
criminal, '' writes Professor Eoss, ^^ presses the 
button of a social mechanism, and at the other 
end of the land or the year innocent lives are 
snuffed out. '^ It takes imagination and knowl- 
edge vividly to visualize the new kinds of crime. 
Public opinion has not as yet focussed its disap- 
proval upon the men who commit dispassionate 
and long-distance crimes for profits. We need a 
new test of citizenship, — a test which is a social 
rather than a purely individual test. We need a 
kind of imagination which will vivify distant 
deeds, and dastardly deeds which are not spec- 
tacular or blood-curdling. 



146 Industrial Betterment 

6. Industrial Control. — Industrial betterment 
is also dependent upon industrial control. A 
few centuries ago the dominant form of govern- 
ment was autocratic. Political power was con- 
ceived to be the birthright of the few. The great 
mass of people were not considered to be capable 
of participating in government. To-day in theory 
at least in the United States, autocracy has been 
replaced by democracy, — a government of, by, 
and for the people. In the industrial world, the 
owner of the capital invested in the business has 
been the autocrat. It was the theory, barring 
stealing and contract breaking, that a man should 
be allowed to operate his business, buy or sell, 
hire and discharge, in the manner which, in his 
judgment, seemed best. The government ought 
to keep hands off; and no employee should be 
allowed in any way to dictate or even to suggest 
how the business in which he was expending his 
labor power should be operated. The^e were 
fundamentals in the creed of business absolutism 
which now is being discredited. 

Nearly all Americans to-day are willing to 
concede that business absolutism has its dangers. 
But, if the business autocrat be benevolent, may 
not the resultant form be highly successful and 
desirable'? The benevolent business man may 
introduce welfare work, profit sharing, and old 
age pensions ; he may give liberally to libraries, 
hospitals and Christmas entertainments. Withal 
the benevolent employer may be a capable and 
kindly industrial despot. The crucial indict- 



Industrial Control 147 

ment which may be brought against him is that 
he is not responsible to the mass of the people or 
to his own employees. To-day, great financial 
and industrial power is concentrated in the hands 
of men nearly as independent of the public will 
as was Louis XIV of France or Catharine of 
Eussia. 

The industrial world is emerging from the era 
of industrial autocracy. The regulation of big 
industries is one of the methods of reducing 
autocratic power in the industrial field. Eegula- 
tion of industry is in reality the first step towards 
state socialism. Private property rights are 
diluted by the regulation imposed from without. 
Eegulation of industry in the United States is 
still on trial ; but it seems probable that more 
industries will be obliged to submit to govern- 
mental regulations, and that more and more 
stringent regulations may be applied. Govern- 
mental fixation of prices is likely to come first in 
regard to some article supplied by a local mon- 
opoly such as milk or ice. If regulation does 
not measure up to the expectations of the Ameri- 
can people, a movement towards government 
ownership or state socialism, or towards some 
form of industrial democracy may be expected. 
Of course, government ownership and operation 
do not differ greatly from extremely rigid regula- 
tion. 

State socialism is in reality a form of autocratic 
control of industry. A majority of the citizens 
of the community or nation are substituted for 



148 Industrial Betterment 

the private corporation or individual owner. 
The workers have no voice in the management of 
the business except as voters. Our post-ofl&ce 
system is an example of state socialism. In- 
dustrial democracy grants to the workers in the 
business a large measui^e of control in regard to 
the management of the business. A cooperative 
factory is an example of industrial democracy. 
The socialists look forward to a form of industrial 
democracy. The trade agreement system in 
which employers treat with their organized em- 
ployees, and thus determine many of the con- 
ditions under which the business is to be oper- 
ated, is a compromise between industrial democ- 
racy and autocracy. The best illustration of this 
system is found in the soft coal mining industry. 
Industrial autocracy is doomed. To ignore both 
the general public and the employees will no 
longer be possible. Four alternative methods of 
controlling industry are possible and practicable : 
—regulation, government ownership or state 
socialism, trade agreements, and cooperation or 
some other form of industrial democracy. 

7. The Proposals of the Single Taxers. — 
The many-headed program of social workers for 
industrial betterment is not acceptable to certain 
more radical groups of men. The single tax 
program has a double significance. It proposes 
a method of getting revenue for the government, 
and also a scheme for the elimination of poverty. 
The thoroughgoing advocates of the single tax 
propose that all of the economic rent of land be 



The Proposals of the Single Taxers 149 

taken by the government in the form of a land 
tax, and that no other tax of any kind be levied. 
The selling value of the land, not including im- 
provements, would be reduced to zero, and men 
could no longer afford to hold land which they 
did not use. According to the theory of the 
single tax, monopoly and great economic in- 
equalities arise out of the private receipt of land 
rents. Place all men on an equality in regard to 
access to land and competition will then have 
fair play, argue the single taxers. They desire to 
continue, not to destroy competition. Henry 
George, the great American advocate of the 
single tax, set for himself the task of discovering 
why with progress continues poverty. His con- 
clusion was that the fundamental cause of poverty 
and economic injustice was bound up in the 
receipt of land rent by private individuals. 
Divert land rent to public coffers and remove all 
other forms of taxes, and, according to Henry 
George and his followers, poverty will vanish. 
Land now held out of use for speculative purposes 
would, after the introduction of the single tax, 
immediately be utilized, or at least released from 
the grip of the speculator. 

Without going to the extreme advocated by 
Henry George, it seems reasonable to argue that 
taking the tax off from buildings, machinery, 
and personal property, and correspondingly in- 
creasing the tax on land, will tend to increase 
the number of buildiugs erected and the amount 
of machinery utilized. Bad housing is now 



150 Industrial Betterment 

recognized as a serious social evil. The demand 
for houses outruns the supply of good and 
sanitary houses. We now penalize the man who 
builds a residence or an apartment house by tax- 
ing his building. If the tax on buildings were 
removed and the builder no longer penalized for 
improving his property and benefiting the city, 
more buildings would be built. By placing an 
added tax on land we would also stimulate the 
land owner to erect more buildings. And when 
landlords compete fiercely for tenants the man 
with poor insanitary buildings goes without 
tenants. A potent incentive is given the former 
to improve their property, — more potent and 
searching than housing regulations. The ex- 
perience of certain cities in Southwestern Canada 
tends to prove the validity of this thesis. No 
student of social reform should neglect to study 
the theory and art of taxation. 

8. The Proposals of the Socialists. — So- 
cialists propose to improve conditions by elimi- 
nating the private receipt of rent, interest, and 
profits. All large-scale industries are to be owned 
and operated by the community collectively. 
Socialists stand for political and industrial de- 
mocracy. They do not, as do the single taxers, 
emphasize the importance of competition ; they 
point out that competition is wasteful. These 
enthusiasts for radical social reform declare that 
competition leads to combination and large-scale 
industry ; and when an industry becomes large- 
scale it is held to be ripe for social control. Ac- 



The City vs. the Rural Districts 151 

cording to the socialists, society is outgrowing 
private capitalism as it has outgrown slavery or 
feudalism. Nevertheless, under socialism it is 
assumed that the private ownership of many 
forms of wealth would be continued. Under 
capitalism, the socialists insist, the wage earners 
are exploited. From their point of view, the 
private capitalist is an unnecessary evil. The 
socialists hold high a fine ideal of economic jus- 
tice and of equality of opportunity. In 1912, 
the Socialist Party polled about 900,000 votes. 
In the immediate future, socialism is a force to 
be reckoned with ; and all students of human 
society should carefully and calmly study the 
literature of scientific socialism. The denuncia- 
tions of many ignorant opponents of socialism 
are worse than futile. 

9. The City vs. the Rural Districts.— Some 
Americans insist that industrial betterment can 
come only after the rush of men and women 
towards the cities is stopped. From time to 
time back-to-the-land movements are started, 
and plans are formulated for the distribution of 
immigrants in the farming districts. ^^ Three 
acres and liberty ^' is typical of some of the theo- 
rizing upon the subject of rural independence 
and simplicity. But the trend towards the cities 
cannot be stopped by Utopian theorizing, it con- 
tinues. And the same motives which lead native 
Americans to go to the cities tend to keep the 
immigrant there. Can we expect the immigrant 
to go to the rural districts at a time when the 



152 Industrial Betterment 

natives are deserting the farm for the city f The 
city is a ^'high speed social-transformer.'^ It is 
a *4earn-whiIe-you- wait-school " in which immi- 
grants learn American ways and language. 

Unfortunately we have our eyes turned in the 
wrong direction. ' ' We laud country life when we 
should strive for the improvement of the cities. " 
Americans should cease bewailing the rise of 
cities and the depopulation of the rural districts. 
Our attention should be turned towards making 
our cities beautiful and healthful, and towards 
reducing the isolation and monotony of life in 
the rural districts. Positive social action is 
needed. The indications are that in the future 
the demarkations between rural and urban will 
grow less and less pronounced. The predominant 
type of the future will not be urban or rural ; it 
will be suburban. 

Industrial betterment and improved conditions 
in our cities must include better and more whole- 
some facilities for recreation. The routine, regu- 
larity, and monotony of work ought to be balanced 
by j oy ous and uplifting amusements. ^ * The spirit 
of play which keeps human beings young is very 
early atrophied in the specialized labor of this 
day. '' Too many workers of to-day do not know 
how to play ; debauchery and hoodlumism typify 
their concept of a good time. The American 
people are just awakening to the value of directed 
amusements. The time is not far distant when 
municipalities will provide recreation facilities 
for old and young as they now provide facilities 



The Church and Industrial Betterment 153 

for education of the ordinary type. The tradi- 
tional attitude of the Christian churches has been 
to repress or to ignore the desire for recreation. 
It is high time a new policy was adopted ; and 
the Y. M. 0. A. and a few churches are doing 
creditable pioneer work. But the reactionary 
who favors nothing that is new is still to be 
reckoned with. Let us keep before our eyes 
those splendid words of Professor Patten : ^* Vice 
must first be fought by welfare, not by restraint ; 
and society is not safe until to-day's pleasures are 
stronger than its temptations. . . . Amuse- 
ment is stronger than vice and can stifle the lust 
of it.'' 

ID. The Church and Industrial Better- 
ment. — What light does a brief study of the 
Industrial Situation throw upon the work of the 
Christian churches f It has been noted that, as a 
consequence of industrial changes, the functions 
of the home, the school, and the government 
have undergone considerable modifications. Is 
it reasonable to expect the Church to remain un- 
affected ? The Church is an institution and, as 
such, is affected by institutional inertia. The 
Church as a great and powerful institution was 
evolved, made strong, and crystallized in an era 
preceding the recent revolutionary changes in 
industrial activities. Consequently, it is logical 
to infer that many methods which were excellent 
a generation or two ago may be ineffective or in- 
efficient at the present time. For example, in the 
days when families lived in comparative isolation 



154 Industrial Betterment 

and when reading material was not abundant, the 
Church, the minister, and the sermon served a 
purpose which is to-day performed in part by 
other agencies. All thinking men and women 
recognize that the Church is a powerful social 
institution. But are its leaders tackling these 
problems of adjustment as seriously as is desir- 
able! Can the potent influence of this great in- 
stitution be efficiently, and without considerable 
friction and lost motion, directed towards indus- 
trial betterment, towards improving the lot of the 
working classes ? Can the influence of the Church 
be so directed as to bring the heavy weight of its 
disapproval upon those who break labor laws, 
adulterate food products, and pay starvation 
wages ? Can we place regard for social welfare 
alongside of '* personal correctness '' as a requisite 
of Christian character? These are some of the 
vital questions which the followers of the Car- 
penter must answer and answer correctly. The 
young men and young women of the Church can 
do much for its future by studying in this era of 
transformation the industrial situation, — its effect 
upon men and women, and upon the functions of 
social institutions. And this study should be 
undertaken in the scientific spirit, — it should be 
a searching after truth. 

As a matter of fact, our churches are finding it 
difl&cult to reach and to help the wage earners of 
to-day. Yet all Christians are followers of a 
working man. Correctly or incorrectly, no in- 
considerable percentage of American wage earners 



Summary 155 

think that the Church is not in sympathy with 
them. They note that it is supported in a large 
measure by contributions made by the wealthy 
and the employing class. The working men feel, 
and often for good and sufficient reasons, that the 
Church as an institution does not look with favor 
upon the activities of labor organizations. Only 
a short time ago the writer listened to an attack, 
made by one of the most prominent clergymen of 
the Middle West, upon certain wage earners' move- 
ments. The nature of the address proved conclu- 
sively either that the speaker was ignorant of the 
aspirations and ideals back of the labor move- 
ment, or that he was hopelessly biased and preju- 
diced. Men of this type are destroying the pres- 
tige and influence of the Church among the wage 
workers of the nation. They are leading the 
working man to feel that the Church represents 
what has been called ^'Churchianity,'' not Chris- 
tianity. 

Summary 

Many well-established businesses are introduc- 
ing welfare work in their plants; but welfare 
work has obvious limitations. 

Organized labor through collective bargaining 
may raise wages and improve working conditions ; 
but trade-union action cannot directly and effect- 
ively attack monopoly profits or land rents. 

Through legislative action the competitive field 
may be narrowed. 

Organizations of consumers may accomplish 
much in improving the quality of products and 
the working conditions ; but again there are very 



156 Industrial Betterment 

obvious limitations to this plan of industrial bet- 
terment. 

A new test of citizenship is needed in the 
twentieth century. 

The industrial world is emerging from the era 
of industrial autocracy. 

Both single taxers and socialists aim to elimi- 
nate special privileges and economic injustice. 

The future American type of civilization is to be 
suburban. The problems centering around proper 
recreational facilities are vital to social better- 
ment. 

The Church is not efficiently directing its pow- 
erful influence towards industrial betterment. 



Suggestive Questions 

What percentage of the membership of your 
church are wage earners ? 

What percentage of the employees of the shops, 
factories and stores of your community are in 
sympathy with the churches of the community f 

Is your pastor a student of modern sociological 
problems ? 

Has a social survey been made of your com- 
munity t 

Is your church cooperating with the board of 
health, the anti-tuberculosis society, or other 
agencies interested in the health of men, women 
and children living in your community and state I 



References for Further Reading 



Chapter I 
Ely, ''Evolution of Industrial Society." 
Hobson, '* Evolution of Modern Capitalism." 
Carlton, ''Economic Influences upon Educational 

Progress in the U. S., 1820-1850," Bulletin of the 

University of Wisconsin, 
Carlton, " History and Problems of Organized 

Labor," chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 11. 

Hourwich, ** Immigration and Labor." 
Commons, " Races and Immigrants in America." 

Chapter II 
Howe, " The City, the Hope of Democracy." 
Taylor, "Satellite Cities," a series of articles in 

The Survey, 191 2-1 9 13. 
Carver, " Principles of Rural Economics." 
Carlton, " Scientific Management and the Wage 

Earner, * ' Journal of Political Economy ^ October, 1 9 1 2 . 
Veblen, " The Theory of Business Enterprise." 
Carlton, " History and Problems of Organized 

Labor," chapter i. 

Chapter III 

Ell wood, " Sociology and Modern Social Problems. " 

Addams, " Democracy and Social Ethics," chapters 
3 and 4. 

Patten, "New Basis of Civilization," chapters 2 
and 3. 

Parsons, "The Old-Fashioned Woman." 

Oilman, "The Home." 

157 



158 References for Further Reading 

Chapter IV 

Carlton, "Education and Industrial Evolution.** 
Dewey, " The School and Society.*' 
Ward, *' Dynamic Sociology,*' volume I, chapter 14. 
Carlton, *^ History and Problems of Organized 
Labor,** chapter 17. 

Dean, " The Worker and the State." 
Kerschensteiner, " Education for Citizenship.** 

Chapter V 
Goldmark, " Fatigue and Efficiency.*' 
Carlton, *' Education and Industrial Evolution," 
chapters 5 and 6. 

Carlton, " History and Problems of Organized La- 
bor,*' chapters 13 and 14. 

Publications of The National Child Labor Com- 
mittee. 

Spargo, " The Bitter Cry of the Children.** 
Schreiner, •'* Woman and Labor.** 

Chapter VI 
Goldmark, "Fatigue and Efficiency.'* 
Nearing, " Wages in the United States.*' 
Chapin, "Standard of Living among Workingmen's 
Families in New York City.** 

Streightoff, "The Standard of Living among the 
Industrial People of America.** 

Carlton, " History and Problems of Organized La- 
bor," pp. 4-6, 62-63, 137-143- 

Adams and Sumner, "Labor Problems." 

Chapter VII 
Kellor, "Out of Work." 
Hunter, "Poverty." 
Devine, "Misery and its Causes." 
Hobson, " The Problem of the Unemployed," 
Hadley, "Economics," chapter 11. 



References for Further Reading 159 

Carlton, *< History and Problems of Organized La- 
bor/' chapter 16. 

Sargent, *' Statistics of Unemployment and the 
Work of Employment Offices/' Bulletin of U. S, 
Bureau of Labor Statistics^ Number 109. 

Chapter VIII 

Carlton, ^* History and Problems of Organized La- 
bor." 

Commons, " Trade Unionism and Labor Prob- 
lems." 

Adams and Sumner, '^ Labor Problems." 

Mitchell, ** Organized Labor." 

Brooks, "American Syndicalism : The I. W. W." 

Ely, ** The Labor Movement in America." 

Chapter IX 

Patten, ** New Basis of Civilization." 

Rauschenbusch, << Christianity and the Social 
Crisis." 

Earp, " The Social Engineer." 

Brooks, "The Social Unrest." 

Carlton, "History and Problems of Organized La- 
bor," chapter 18. 

Fillebrown, "The A. B. C. of Taxation." 

Cross, "Essentials of Socialism." 



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